


prelude to a change

by orchid_spiral



Category: Chikara (Professional Wrestling), Combat Zone Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, Professional Wrestling, Progress Wrestling, Ring of Honor, SHIMMER Women Athletes, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling
Genre: Action, Body Horror, Experimentation, Horror, Mind Control, Multi, Multiple Personalities, Murder, Mutilation, a metric ton of OCs, bank robberies, cosmic horror, prison break - Freeform, superhero au, tags prone to changes as necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-09-13 10:11:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9119080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid_spiral/pseuds/orchid_spiral
Summary: Desperate times call for some... interesting measures, especially when so much is at stake.(Or,Suicide SquadmeetsWormwith wrestlers.)





	1. intake

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there. I've been out for most of this year, working on this. It's taken a hell of a lot of time and effort- and it's nowhere near done- but at least I can finally present the first few chapters. I really, really hope you all like it, and thank you for reading. (If I've forgotten to tag anything, please tell me.)

“To be honest, I’m really surprised that they agreed to the plan.”  
  
It’s long after dark has fallen. Outside, the sky is obscured by a thick layer of dark grey clouds. Huge chunks of ice hit the ground, making enough of a noise that they have to raise their voices to be heard clearly.  
  
“Why? It’s a good plan. You said so yourself.”  
  
He smiles. “Well, apart from the fact that we’re taking a bad situation and giving it the potential to become that much worse…”  
  
“Which you already mentioned. Twice.”  
  
“Aside from that,” he continues, “I’m surprised because to be frank, I didn’t think they’d even hear you out. I mean, half of the division _hate_ you, Veda.” He folds his arms.  
  
“I’m just that good,” his companion replies with a vulpine grin, her eyes shining behind her glasses.  
  
“I mean, you’re an ex-supervillain,” he starts. “You’re a woman, you don’t take shit from anyone, you read minds, and the worst part? _You’re a lawyer._ ”  
  
“Like I said,” she says smugly, “I’m just that good.”  
  
“If I ever get arrested, Veda, I want you for my lawyer.”  
  
Veda Scott grins at him. “Zack, I don’t think you’d ever get caught.”  
  
“But if I did-”  
  
“ _If_ you did, of course I’d be happy to help out a friend.”  
  
Zack Sabre Jr sighs exaggeratedly. “Thank God.”  
  
Veda sits down at the table and looks up at Zack with a serious expression. “So, now that we’ve got the question of your future legal representation out of the way… you’re absolutely certain you want to do this?”  
  
Zack sits down opposite her and nods. “Damn right I am. You need someone with the skills and experience to lead this mission, and I don’t think there’s anyone more qualified than I am.”  
  
“I’m not disputing that,” Veda says. “But seriously… the threat level’s through the roof. You do understand that, right?”

“You know I do,” Zack replies. “I’ll be fine, Veda.”  
  
“You’re not going alone,” Veda states flatly. “You need someone with you. You can’t handle a team of villains by yourself.”  
  
He holds his hands up, placating her. “I know. I tried to tell you before, I’ve already had someone ask me to come along, but I’m not sure…” 

“Oh? Who?”

“Me,” a new voice says from the door.  
  
“Mark, didn’t anyone ever teach you how to knock?” Veda asks, adjusting her glasses.  
  
Mark Andrews shrugs. “Didn’t see the point in it.” He takes a seat at the table, peering down at the assorted papers scattered across the surface.

Zack and Veda exchange a glance.

“Look, I know I don’t have powers,” Mark starts, “but please don’t insult me by ruling me out because of that. I’ve got years of experience and I know I can do this, all right?”  
  
“It’s not that I don’t think you can keep up,” Zack says. “If this were a normal military mission, I’d bring you along in a heartbeat. But this _isn’t_ a normal mission. We’re talking about a team full of psychopaths, murderers, and psychopathic murderers. They’re not soldiers, they’re not used to taking orders, and even with the measures we’re taking, they’re probably going to rebel against the authority figures whenever they can. They’ve all got powers, and the fact that you don’t is going to make them not take you seriously at _best._ And to be honest, Mark… you don’t exactly make people fear you with your mere presence.”  
  
“Also, for the record, just because they’re convicts doesn’t mean you can treat them however you want,” Veda adds. “Last time something like this got tried out, it failed spectacularly for exactly that reason.”  
  
Zack blinks. “Wait, someone tried this before?”  
  
“It was a long time ago,” Veda says, shrugging. “And in Europe, and kind of a secret. Basically, the government of a country I won’t name recruited a bunch of criminals with certain specialties and sent them off to retrieve some top-secret ultra-special weapon blueprints that’d been stolen by spies and sold to terrorists.”  
  
“And it failed?” Mark asks, momentarily diverted.  
  
Veda waves a hand. “Eh, kinda-sorta. They got the plans, but one of the guys in charge really hated the fact that he was working with criminals, so he kept getting physical to remind them who was in charge. The criminals were supposed to get reduced sentences for completing the job, but instead, once they got back to the home country, they topped the guy and _mysteriously vanished_ , and none of them have been found since. I mean, they got the plans back, but they also got a pretty firm reminder of how they fucked up.”  
  
“All right, I get you,” Mark says. “But I still want to do it.”  
  
“Why?” Veda asks, mystified. “You do know that all of you could be dead as soon as you walk in, right?”  
  
“Yeah, you mentioned it,” Mark says. “I don’t care.”  
  
“ _Why?_ ” Veda asks.

“I’ve been in the RS for years, Veda,” Mark says. “I’ve nearly been killed more times than I can count. I survived Villain and Marionette and the Riots, I can handle myself. Trust me.”  
  
A long moment passes, and nobody speaks. Zack casts a long look at Veda, and finally nods. “All right. I see your point.”  
  
Mark lets out a breath, relieved, and smiles. “Good. Thanks.”  
  
Both men turn to Veda, who shrugs, her face solemn. “What do you want me to say? I obviously can’t talk you out of it. Just…”  
  
“What?” Mark asks, his expression falling.  
  
“Be careful, OK?” Veda asks. “Don’t get killed. Especially not when I’m the one who thought up this whole thing in the first place.”  
  
Mark crosses his heart solemnly. “I promise. I have no intention of getting killed.”  
  
“Likewise,” Zack says dryly.  
  
There’s an awkward pause, the kind that goes for just a little too long, and then Zack clears his throat. “Shall we?”  
  
Mark flops into a chair and nods. “Sure. Strategy first, or?”  
  
Veda shakes her head. “Strategy comes second. First thing we need to do is pick who you’re going with.”  
  
She rummages through the bag beside her chair, pulls out a thick folder and sets in on the table. “These are the people they’ll let us take- there’s around thirty or so in this folder, I think. There’s a couple of catches, though: first is that you can only take about ten or eleven, second is that there’s no guarantee that the ones we ask will say yes. And, OK, third, the department might do some interfering if they don’t like our picks, but I’ll do my best to run interference.”

Mark nods. “What do we have to offer them?”

“They come with us and survive, their sentence gets cut in half,” Zack replies.  
  
Mark considers this and nods. “All right. Think we should aim for numbers?”  
  
Zack thinks about it for a second. “As long as we can control them, I don’t see why not. Emphasis on _can control_.”  
  
Mark grimaces, looking down at the folder. “Something tells me this is going to be a lot more complicated than I thought.”  
  
Veda shrugs. “Well, let’s make it simple. How about we go through the list and start by ruling out anyone who we don’t want on the team? Though I think that we should all agree on including someone, before we add them to the team.”  
  
“Sounds good,” Zack says. 

Mark nods.  
  
She starts going through the folder, taking out bundles of stapled sheets and stacking them in the middle of the table. Mark pulls a tablet from his bag and turns it on, while Zack picks up a pen and pulls a pad of paper in front of him. “Shoot.”  
  
Veda adjusts her glasses and picks up the first bundle, looking down at a slightly blurred photo of a huge reptilian humanoid with dead eyes. “Viper. Limited shapeshifting abilities, effectively turns into a very durable snake-man hybrid with venomous fangs…”  
  
Zack’s already shaking his head. “Are you kidding? Viper’s a fucking sociopath. He only does things for his own amusement, and even if he agreed to come on the mission, he’d definitely stab us in the back as soon as it stopped being interesting.”  
  
“Even if he had powers that’d make him useful, the fact that the reward for completing the mission is a reduced sentence is enough to make me say no,” Mark agrees. “Viper deserves every second he got, and I’m not going to reduce it.”  
  
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to OK him either,” Veda admits, drawing a line through the name. “All right.” She sighs heavily, staring down at the next photo- a trio of beings that look like monstrous clowns. Rosemary: life absorption, both living and non-living materials. Temporary super strength and regeneration.”  
  
“Isn’t she the nutjob who claims to be possessed by a demon?” Mark asks, frowning.  
  
Veda grimaces. “Yeah. I used to know her, before she… changed. I don’t know her now.” Before either Zack or Mark can reply, Veda hurries onward. “And her friends: Abyss- super strength and some kind of extra-durable skin. Then Crazzy Steve. He’s officially an unknown quantity, but the smart money says he’s got some kind of enhanced senses. The three of them claim to have some kind of psychic link, but there’s no proof of that.”  
  
Zack folds his arms, letting Veda’s earlier comment slide. “Abyss isn’t known for his agility. He can withstand a fair bit, but he can’t move that fast. I can’t really say he’d be that helpful.”  
  
Mark looks up from his tablet, dubious. “Honestly, on a mission like this, I don’t think taking anyone with unconfirmed powers is a good idea. I’m not prepared to assume that the psychic link story is true, either. But Rosemary could be a good idea.”  
  
Zack shrugs. “I wouldn’t be opposed to including her.”

Veda looks dubious. “I’d like to meet her first.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Zack says. “Also, would she agree to come on the mission without her… whatever they are?”  
  
Mark shrugs. “Tell her the reward would stand for all three of them. They’re hardly big-time criminals. Those three going free earlier than they should isn’t going to hurt anyone.”  
  
“So we’re agreed?” Veda asks. “We interview her, then decide?”

Both men nod.

Veda puts a question mark next to the name, puts a line through the other two and moves on to the next.  
  
“Edge. Super agility and energy manipulation.” Veda purses her lips, handing around the papers. “I don’t know…”  
  
Zack shakes his head. “He’s versatile, but from what I’ve heard, he’s got a bad tendency to rebel and he thinks he knows best. Not much of a team player.”  
  
“Yeah, I’d say he’s a no,” Mark agrees.  
  
Veda shrugs, crosses the name off and moves on to the next name. “Oh, God. Sweet Saraya-”  
  
“ _No!_ ”  
  
“ _Hell_ , no,” Mark agrees emphatically.  
  
“Yeah, I’m not even going to go any further,” Veda mutters, drawing a line rather heavily through the name. “All right… Snowflake?”  
  
“The crazy bank robber?” Zack asks, glancing down at the photo of a tall, handsome man wearing a flower crown. “How’d he make it on the list?”  
  
“Probably because it says here he does light fields that can effectively make people invisible, work as forcefields and he can use them as weapons,” Veda replies, scanning the notes. “Of course, he apparently has DID, so that might be a problem…”  
  
Zack frowns absent-mindedly, staring off into space. After a few seconds, he looks thoughtful. “Tell you what. Let’s all assess him, and then we can decide if we want him on the team.”  
  
Mark shrugs. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”  
  
Veda nods. “I can at least help there. All right, Snowflake’s a tentative yes… how about Thespian? Sonic powers…”  
  
“Guy’s a total drama queen, no pun intended,” Zack objects. “Too much potential to screw up the team dynamic.”  
  
“And sonic powers won’t be that helpful,” Mark adds. “Unless you’ve got countermeasures, they affect everyone, including your own people, and the kind of countermeasures we’d need haven’t been mass-produced yet.”  
  
Veda shrugs and draws a line through the name. “Onibaba. Super strength, super speed, can turn her hands into claws…”  
  
“Two problems,” Zack starts. “First, she’s sadistic to the point that it’s going to interfere with any orders we give. She loves fucking people up, and honestly, I don’t think that’s what we need.”  
  
“And the second problem?” Mark asks curiously.  
  
“I’m gonna guess Zack’s talking about the language barrier,” Veda says.  
  
Zack nods. “Onibaba’s grasp of English isn’t too strong. She’d probably be able to understand the basic sentences, but that won’t work in a fight. And neither of us speak Japanese.”  
  
“All right, scratch her,” Mark says. “Who’s next?”  
  
“Lilith. Telekinesis, shapeshifting, and… well. She says it’s illusions, intel implies that it’s actually summoning monsters. No actual proof as to which is correct.”  
  
“Either way, it’s useful,” Mark comments. “We either get disposable fighters or ways to manipulate the enemy.”  
  
“Right, count her in,” Zack says.  
  
Veda grimaces at the next name. “Yeah, no.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Villain.”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Mark says flatly, his eyes narrowed.  
  
“ _Hell_ , no,” Zack echoes.

“Machine?” Veda asks. “No powers, but he’s a cyborg- super strength, resilience…”  
  
“A cyborg with a serious attitude problem,” Zack objects. “The guy’s an arsehole. That’s how he wound up in prison in the first place. He’d be nothing but a liability.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m not going to argue,” Mark agrees.

“Carmine,” Veda suggests. “Blood manipulation and some kind of emotion control.”

  
Mark looks troubled, glancing around the room. “I… don’t know. I mean… I did get him locked up, but…” 

“But?” Veda asks.

“We used to be friends,” Mark admits, staring down at the photo of a man with an emo fringe, turning away as he flips the camera off. “I don’t know if he’d agree…”

  
“So that’s a potential source of conflict,” Zack muses. “On the other hand, he’s… well. Good at killing. And maiming. And mutilating…”  
  
“And defiling dead bodies,” Veda adds. “The guy’s fucked in the head.”  
  
“But capable,” Zack rebuts. “And honestly, cutting his sentence in half doesn’t change the fact that he’s not getting out for a long time. Thank God.”  
  
“He is a qualified doctor,” Mark says, though he doesn’t sound too enthusiastic. “We can always use a medic.”  
  
“Yeah, but using Carmine as your medic after the shit he did?” Veda asks incredulously. “Come on.”  
  
Zack folds his arms. “I don’t know if we will use him as a medic, but if we do, then I can assure you that if he tries to fuck us over, it will not go well for him.”  
  
Veda groans. “It’s your funeral, and I really hope that doesn’t turn out to be literal.”  
  
“Look, let’s talk to him and see what happens,” Mark suggests. “I mean, I’d like to talk to him, anyway…”

“All right, sure,” Veda says. “Next up is Glitch: creates items, mostly weapons.”  
  
Zack shakes his head. “Guy’s a little bit nuts. Thinks he’s a rock star, has a weird obsession with broomsticks. And the stuff he summons tends to give out after a few uses.”  
  
“Isn’t he the guy who summons video game stuff?” Mark asks curiously. “That could be an advantage.”  
  
“The problem with that argument is that most of the stuff he summons isn’t predictable,” Zack explains. “You know, he summons some cool gun he saw in an anime, fine, but what happens if you point that gun at an enemy, expecting it to act like a normal gun, and it blows the wall down?”  
  
Mark winced. “Right.”  
  
“Not to mention, some of the stuff he’s summoned before won’t work for anyone except him,” Veda adds. “Which is fairly problematic.”  
  
“All right, scratch him,” Mark says. “Anyone else want a drink?”  
  
“Please,” Veda replies, sighing. “It’s going to be a long night.”  
  
Mark stands. “All right, I’ll get some coffee.”  
  
It’s a while later, the hail long ceased and the night only grown darker when Veda puts down her empty cup and sighs. “Guess we’d better keep going, huh?”  
  
“Who’s next?” Mark asks.  
  
Instead of answering, Veda scowls down at the paper.  
  
“Veda?” Zack prompts.  
  
Mark leans over her shoulder and raises his eyebrows. “Seeker? Isn’t he your…”  
  
Veda’s icy glare cuts him off.  
  
“How the hell did he get on this list?” Zack asks curiously.  
  
Veda glares at the paper like she’s trying to set it on fire with her mind. “I have no idea.”  
  
Mark sinks back down into his chair. “I… guess he could be useful? Maybe?”

  
“No, seriously, how the fuck did he get on this list?” Zack asks. “I mean, who put the guy with mind control powers up for consideration?”  
  
“Well, assuming that we’re going to be up against humans, I can sort of see where they’re coming from,” Mark says tentatively.  
  
“ _But_ ,” Veda rebuts. “The only person we absolutely know he can’t affect is me, and since I’m not going, what’s to stop him from taking control of everyone on the team and escaping?”  
  
Mark’s eyes widen. “ _Shit._ You really think he’d do that?” 

“I’d like to think no, but he’s done similar things before, and honestly, that’s not a chance we can afford to take,” Veda replies. “Especially when you consider that by adding him to the team, we’d essentially be giving him enough firepower to level a city and politely asking him not to use it.”  
  
Mark looks down at the papers. “Who the fuck put him on this list?”  
  
“Good question,” Veda comments, drawing a line through the name heavily enough that it nearly rips through the paper. “Next is… Christ. _Beast?_ ”  
  
Zack and Mark pause.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Zack finally comments. “Did you say Beast?”

  
Veda nods, wide-eyed.  
  
“Uh,” Mark says. “I guess… I mean… he is kind of a human Terminator…”  
  
“…who only obeys orders if there’s something in it for him, and could take both of us out in a second, even with the failsafes,” Zack completes. “No way.”  
  
“Yeah, no,” Mark agrees.  
  
“Definitely no,” Veda concludes. “OK, we’ve got another trio: Huntress, Angelico, and Son of Havoc. Huntress creates these… ghost animal minions, for lack of a better description; Angelico regenerates, can fly and shoots light arrows; and Son of Havoc is a technopath with a focus on vehicles.”  
  
“Not sure I like the idea of taking all of them,” Zack comments absently. “It says here they fight like cats and dogs, even though they’re dating.”  
  
“I think we can use Huntress, and we can probably use Angelico,” Mark says, flicking through the pages. “Not sure about Son of Havoc, though.”  
  
“Why not?” Zack asks.  
  
“He’s not reliable,” Mark says bluntly. “He can’t build things at the same rate as most technopaths, so if we need something in a hurry, we can’t trust that he’ll be able to do it. And dragging along boxes of parts is going to slow us down. Why would we need a vehicle guy, anyway?”  
  
“Fair point,” Veda admits. “But the file says that he’s the closest thing to a stabilising influence that the other two have. If you don’t bring him along, they might start acting out.”  
  
Zack waves a hand dismissively. “We can handle that. If we have to, we’ll keep them separated.”  
  
Veda grimaces, but shrugs. “All right. OK, next is… Messenger.”  
  
“The Illuminati guy? Seriously?” Mark asks.  
  
“Now, now, Mark, the Illuminati don’t exist,” Zack chides mockingly.  
  
Mark rolls his eyes. “Yeah, there’s so many other organisations out there who employ assassins who can teleport and do weird blood rituals.”  
  
“Look, let’s ignore that part,” Veda says. “The question here is, do you guys want or need an assassin?”  
  
“Remind me what he does again?” Mark asks.  
  
“Aside from kill people? The only confirmed power we have is that he can teleport through shadows.” Zack replies.  
  
“Sounds useful,” Mark admits. “If he can teleport and take other people with him, that’d be even better.”  
  
“There’s something really off about him, though,” Zack says thoughtfully. “I mean, everyone thinks he’s only in prison because his employers want him there to do something. What’s to stop him from taking this opportunity to escape?”  
  
Veda shrugs. “As far as they’ve been able to establish, none of the wards in the Citadel can block his shadow teleporting. He could literally escape any time he wants, he just hasn’t chosen to.”  
  
Zack looks unconvinced, but he shrugs. “I’ll think about it.”  
  
Veda nods, looks down at the next name, and bites her lip. “Ah.”  
  
“What?” Zack asks.  
  
“Zack… just hear me out, OK?”

Zack sighs. “Just say it, Veda.”  
  
“Buggy Nova-”  
  
Zack goes still.  
  
Veda presses on regardless. “Flight, light bursts-”  
  
Mark manages to sound almost innocent. “She sounds like a good idea.”  
  
Veda nods. “You know how she works, she actually knows how to take orders, and frankly, you could use a reliable quantity on this mission.”  
  
Zack finally reacts. “Give me a reason.”  
  
“Look, it’s not like she killed anyone,” Veda says curtly. “I mean, shit, she could have killed you any time, and she didn’t. Just talk to her, Zack. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I don’t know if I have anything to say to her,” he says quietly.

“Give it a shot, Zack,” Mark suggests.

There’s a very long pause, but Zack finally nods.  
  
“All right,” Veda says. “Mundo… says here he’s got earth manipulation, does parkour…”  
  
“Three problems,” Zack starts, already looking more animated. “The first is the big one: Mundo can make earthquakes and fissures. Effective, sure, but it’s also got a lot of potential to kill us all by accident, or get out of his control and take the whole place down. Then there’s the fault lines… I don’t know if I want to take that risk.”  
  
Veda nods. “Understandable. By the second problem, I take it you’re referring to Valkyrie?”  
  
“Who?” Mark asks.  
  
“Mundo’s girlfriend,” Veda explains. “She escaped getting caught when the RS captured Mundo, and since then she’s made more than a few attempts to free him.”  
  
“Oh, right,” Mark says. “So if we bring Mundo along, Valkyrie might come after us…”  
  
“And God knows if she’d listen to reason,” Zack completes.  
  
“What’s the third reason?” Veda asks.  
  
“He’s an arsehole,” Zack says bluntly. “And frankly, I don’t want to have to put up with him.”  
  
Mark shrugs. “Fine by me. Scratch him.”  
  
There’s a pause as Veda draws a line through the name. “Thousand Faces. Kind of hard to sum up what she does, but you’ve probably heard of her…”  
  
Mark blinks. “Wait. Seriously?”  
  
“Seriously,” Veda replies.  
  
“They’re actually going to let us…?” Zack says incredulously.  
  
Veda nods.  
  
“ _Why?_ ” Mark asks.  
  
Veda smiles coyly. “Well, as I pointed out to the nice people, Thousand Faces is not an operative, an agent, or any kind of employee of the US Government. She’s a prisoner who has _occasionally_ agreed to help out with various problems, but she has no official status. Which makes her just as eligible as anyone else in the Citadel.”  
  
“Yeah, but if she agrees and if we all make it out of there, her sentence gets cut in half,” Zack says. “They won’t like it if that happens.”  
  
Veda waves a hand casually. “They can deal with it. Thousand Faces hasn’t agreed to help out with that many problems, and frankly, she has no reason to. This is a problem just like all the other ones, and to be honest, we could really use her help.”  
  
“You really think she might agree?” Mark asks dubiously.  
  
“I think there’s a good chance,” Veda replies. “She’ll like the reduced sentence, and she probably just wants to get the hell out of her cell for a while.”  
  
Zack shrugs. “All right, but I hope you’re prepared to deal with the fallout if something happens and she gets killed.”  
  
Veda shrugs. “Eh, fuck ‘em. She doesn’t belong to them.”  
  
“Tell them that,” Zack mutters. “Who’s next?”  
  
“Caveman,” Veda says. “Some sort of psychic vision. Lets him see through things.”  
  
Zack shakes his head. “Bad idea. Caveman’s incredibly anti-authority, so I doubt he’d say yes.”  
  
“Is it worth asking anyway?” Mark questions.  
  
“Doubt it,” Zack says. “I mean, he’s in jail for attacking authority figures.”  
  
Mark sighs. “Who’s next? And are we done yet?”  
  
“Almost,” Veda replies. “Next is another trio: Architect, Powerhouse, and Rabid. Architect has some kind of power that lets him make really good plans, Powerhouse has super strength and super resilience, and Rabid… well, nobody really knows with that guy, but regeneration is a possibility. Thoughts?”  
  
Mark flicks through the files and shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”  
  
Zack and Veda look at him.  
  
“Two problems,” Mark explains. “First, they’re not team players. I mean, sure, the three of them together make an awesome team, but they don’t work well with others. If we bring them along, we can’t just let them go off and do their own thing- we can’t trust them that far. If we put someone to supervise them, that’ll ruin the dynamic. And the three of them would be constantly questioning orders, bickering with others- I don’t think we can risk it.”  
  
“And the other problem?” Veda asks.  
  
Mark shrugs. “I honestly don’t think they’ll want in. They work according to their own code, whatever that is, and they spent years following that code as some of the most vicious vigilantes on the record. They wound up in jail for following that code, so why would they want to work with the people who locked them up for doing what they believe is the right thing?”  
  
Zack grimaces. “He’s got a point. And the three of them are an all-or-nothing deal, so we can’t just ask one.”  
  
Veda purses our lips. “How about this? I’ll ask them whether they’re interested, but we’ll proceed on the assumption that they aren’t.”  
  
Both men nod.  
  
“Next is Death Machine. Some kind of clairvoyance that lets him know how to kill people.”  
  
Mark blinks. “Who?”

Zack’s eyebrows shoot up. “ _Seriously?_ ”

“I did a _lot_ of arguing,” Veda replies. “Though officially he doesn’t exist and we’re not making this offer.”

Light dawns on Mark’s face. “Wait. _That_ guy? Holy shit.”

“Yeah. The board weren’t pleased, but their insistence on going down with that utterly stupid ship is plain moronic.”

“So would they actually cut his sentence in half?” Zack asks. “I mean, he never actually _got_ a sentence, they just threw him in prison without a trial…”  
  
Veda nods back. “I’ll do my best to see if I can get his status clarified. Everyone going on this mission is risking their life- if you make it back, I’m sure as hell not going to let anyone get cheated out of their reward.”  
  
“Good,” Zack replies.  
  
“That’s ten,” Mark says. “Isn’t that enough?”  
  
“We’ve still got three left,” Veda points out. “We should at least give them due consideration.”  
  
“All right, who’s left?”  
  
“The Young Bucks,” Veda says.  
  
“Oh. Brilliant,” Zack mutters.  
  
“Blitz and Glitz, right?” Mark asks. “The twins?”  
  
“They’re not twins,” Veda corrects him. “Brothers, but not twins.”  
  
“But they somehow got the same powers, right?” Mark says thoughtfully.  
  
“And a lot of people are very curious about that,” Veda agrees.  
  
“They do lasers, but they have the ability to amplify one aspect of them while minimising the others,” Zack explains. “That is, make a laser so bright it blinds people, or so hard it can knock a wall down, but unable to do other damage.”  
  
“Could be useful,” Mark admits.  
  
“That being said, I’m not working with them.”  
  
“How unexpected,” Veda says wryly.  
  
“You’ve met them, Veda. They’re arseholes, and not only are they arseholes, they’re glory-hogs. We can’t have people on the team if they’re going to spend their time bragging, making trouble and trying to one-up everyone else.”  
  
“Well, when you put it like that…” Mark says.  
  
“I wasn’t expecting a yes,” Veda agrees. She looks down at the last name and freezes.  
  
“What?”  
  
Veda’s eyebrows rise so high they vanish under her hair. “Now _that_ is not what I expected.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Marionette.”  
  
“You have to be kidding me,” Mark says, all humour gone from his voice.  
  
“We could use her,” Zack says almost idly.  
  
“She’s a _monster,”_ Mark spits. 

“So’s half of the people we OK’d,” Veda points out. “She’s also a lot milder than most of the people on this list.”

  
“ _Mild?_ Did you even _see_ everything she left behind?” Mark asks, his voice rising in pitch. “I did! I was there! You don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

“You’re letting your feelings get in the way,” Zack says like he’s talking about the weather. “Give it a rest.”

Mark seethes, but he subsides.

“Look, I’m not saying she didn’t do horrible things,” Veda starts. “But that’s beside the point. She’s powerful, from what this says, she’s controllable, and she’d make a good asset, I think.”  
  
“So do I,” Zack says, and they both turn to Mark.  
  
He takes the stapled sheets from Veda, reads them closely, thinks for a long while, and finally glares at them. “We talk to her first. And I want it on the record that I’m not happy about this.”  
  
“Duly noted,” Veda replies.  
  
“I guess we’re done, then,” Zack comments. “Eleven people in total, huh.”  
  
“Should make a good squad,” Veda agrees.  
  
“So now what?” Mark asks, still looking angry. “Do we talk strategy?”  
  
“Strategy? Fuck no,” Zack replies. “It’s fucking late. I’m going to bed. We can talk strategy tomorrow.”  
  
Veda nods. “And we need to get started on getting agreements from our villains. No point in making strategies if we’re not sure they’ll join up.”  
  
“Tomorrow, then,” Mark says decisively.

And that’s that.

Would that it were so simple.


	2. the conversation: snowflake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You never know what you see/you do it so casually/you live your life like an adrenaline junkie/it’s so hard to feel/what you think is real/the heist is all that I can feel”- Krychek, “Heist”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shrugs* What can I say? I really love Snowflake. Much thanks to DangerousCommieSubversive for her help with the background info on the Flood. If I've forgotten to tag/warn for anything, please tell me. Thank you all for reading.

Then:

Kevin has always hated hospitals.  
  
When he was a teenager, he hated them for the colourful walls, the over-the-top pictures, the way the nurses were so saccharine, the way the doctors treated everyone like they were five, no matter how old they were. Later, he hated them for the looks the older kids, their families and some of the nurses would give him once they found out which ward he was staying in, especially after the attempted school shooting one state over that didn’t incur any casualties- and that he’d obviously had nothing to do with- but had everyone paranoid as _fuck_ for years afterwards.  
  
Now that he’s an adult, he hates them for the constant stench of disinfectant, the unceasing chill, the feeling of cold, impersonal eyes watching his every move, the feeling of death lurking around every corner. He hates the scorn he gets from people- patients and staff both- who don’t know any better, who think he’s some kind of faker, who haven’t seen just how bad things can get.  
  
And he really hates the doctors. So many know jack shit about things that don’t fall in their specialty, and so many think his ailment is a figment of fantasy, driven by Hollywood hype to become a controversy that’s been endlessly debated. The few good ones really try to help, and he’s grateful to them for that, but the bad ones either write him off as a faker or decide to ‘humour’ him by playing along, clearly not believing a word he says until another Incident happens- and then they pass him off to someone else or decide to play hardball, refusing to understand that it’s _really_ not a good idea.  
  
Over the years, the combination of stupidity and inefficiency has made his anger and resentment build up until it’s sitting there, just under the surface, sliding into his brain at every consultation, making him want to scream. Why would he want to fake it? Who would want the kind of attention he gets? Who would _want_ to repeatedly wake up only to find that they don’t know where they are or what time it is or what they did? Who wants to wake up to the realisation that it’s midnight and they’re in the worst part of town, surrounded by some very nasty people, or that they have no idea where they are or who the fuck they’re kissing, or that they’re kneeling in a pool of blood and there’s a blood-stained knife lying in arm’s reach, next to the corpse?  
  
And somehow nobody ever thought of how hard it was to live when one had a brain that was as fundamentally fucked as his: how could you hold down a job when you kept blacking out and waking up in different places? Few employers were willing to give him a chance; fewer still were willing to put up with the Incidents. Disability never paid enough- that would make sense, after all. He didn’t have many friends who were willing to put up with him, and fewer who actually _did_. And as for day-to-day life, what options did he really have? Lock himself in and never leave, sentencing himself to being a hermit? Not only was it unreasonable, it also didn’t work: he tried it a few times, but he inevitably woke up outside his apartment. And the one time he tried having someone else lock him in worked just as badly, because he woke up on the ground outside his apartment, having climbed out the window, fallen and landed with a twisted ankle and a hairline fracture in his arm. So that was out.  
  
The hospitals at least had their shit together… most of the time. At least when he was there, he could safely assume that they knew to keep him within the grounds at all times… and they mostly did.  
The times when they didn’t were usually down to bad luck and human error: sometimes he’d manage to evade everyone by sheer luck or skill, and other times he’d run into people who didn’t know who he was or his specific circumstances, who’d just let ‘him’ walk off because ‘his’ confidence convinced them that ‘he’ was perfectly fine. It was easy to declare that the staff should all know the exact status of every patient, but there were just too many of both, and people forgot, or made mistakes, and they shouldn’t, but they did anyway.  
  
Still. It could have been worse.  
  
He actually kind of likes the hospital he’s at now, a little. Since it’s a dedicated mental hospital, there’s no stench of disinfectant, no constant aura of death, no unceasing chill, and all the patients are in the same bag so there’s fewer judgemental looks. The doctors (for the most part) actually know what they’re doing. The nurses are pretty decent, too.  
The patients, though… that’s a different matter.  
  
On the one hand, Kevin understands that every person at the hospital is there because they need help, sure. The problem is that while the majority of residents do their best to just get along with everyone else, the fact that everyone is there because they have at least one serious problem tends to hinder the whole getting along with people part.  
Of course, that’s not to say that he’s some kind of exception, because he’s not: more than a few of the other residents avoid him like the plague after suffering through his Incidents, and he can hardly blame them. But both ways, it sucks.  
  
All he can do is the best he can. 

At least, that’s the plan, but plans never work out. Not when all he’s doing is innocently watching TV, and then suddenly, everything _shatters._

It happens so fast he can barely comprehend what’s going on. He’s watching the world from afar, like it’s a strange new show, but then he’s right up there, every atom barely an inch away from him, but then he _is_ everything, feels every mote, every surface, every object…

…and all of them break into tiny pieces. The pieces break into smaller pieces, and again, and again, until he and the room and the building and the country and _everything_ are infinitely small, smaller than a grain of sand cut into hundredths, and he _is_ everything and everything is him, and he starts to scream with a mouth that’s in millions of pieces-

-and suddenly it’s reversed, pieces coming together, feeling parts of himself reconnect, and it isn’t until he can almost see the room again that he realises that something’s very, very wrong.

Like something got put together in a way it shouldn’t have.

The last thing he feels is a slight touch, as if someone’s tapped him on the shoulder. The last thing he sees is a golden haze around his hand, like soft light.

The last thing he hears is a whisper in the back of his mind, a low, husky voice.

_{My turn.}_

And that, more or less, was the end of Kevin Condron.

At least, for now.

 

  
  
  
Now:  
  
“This guy’s a piece of work,” Zack says when he meets Veda and Mark outside her office the next morning. “I’ve been going through what I’ve been given, and _wow_.” 

“How bad?” Mark asks.

“Three bank robberies in two days, to start with,” Zack says. “All of them violent, all of them involving a lot of physical damage.”  
  
“In two days?” Veda asks. “Oh. I bet he watched too many films.”  
  
Mark shrugs. “Sounds about right.”  
  
“How do you mean?” Zack asks.  
  
“Hollywood films have a tendency to depict bank robberies as, when they’re successful, getting hundreds of thousands- or even millions- of dollars at a time,” Veda explains. “In reality, banks rarely have much cash on hand. If you want to get the big numbers, you’d need to do some hacking, or set things up very carefully. If you just find the nearest bank and rob it, you’ll score somewhere between fifteen and forty thousand, on average. Now, to be fair, that is a lot of money for most people, but it’s nowhere near what people expect, so I’m guessing that Snowflake needed more money than he found the bank had.”  
  
“So how’d he rob them all?” Mark asks. “I mean, once the first happened, all the nearby banks would have been on lockdown.”  
  
“Simple. He can make forcefields that make whatever’s behind them invisible: cameras, heat signatures, the works. All he had to do was keep the forcefield up and either walk in behind people or steal the keys,” Zack replies.  
  
“But what about when he took the money?” Mark asks. “Wouldn’t the cameras have noticed that?”  
  
“All three cases, he used the fields to knock a hole in the wall and just walked out,” Zack explains. “Problem solved. But once people realised the money was going missing, they tried to figure out what was going on, and in a couple of instances intervened, and then he put two people in the ICU.”  
  
“So what did he- wait, no, I’m getting ahead of myself,” Mark says. “Who is this guy?”  
  
As they walk, Veda opens her file and starts reading. “Kevin Condron, codename Snowflake, late twenties, American. Pretty standard life until his teenage years, when he starts going in and out of various hospitals and is eventually diagnosed with what is apparently either dissociative fugue or dissociative identity disorder.”  
  
“You mean split personalities,” Zack says.  
  
Veda purses her lips. “Sort of. Dissociative fugue is a condition where people wake up far away from home, not knowing where they are or how they got there, and they can’t remember anything. While they’re in these fugue states, sometimes they wind up with whole new identities, but these identities generally vanish after they wake up. DID, on the other hand, is, yeah, split personalities. But there’s been a lot of arguing over whether it’s real or not, because it’s hard to officially diagnose and most of the known cases turned up after there were films made about it, leading to a _massive_ argument over whether it’s a valid condition.”  
  
Mark grimaces. “So what does Condron have?”  
  
“ _Before_ he manifested, he mostly had fugue states, but occasionally instead of going anywhere, he manifested one of four known personalities and usually wound up having the kind of freak out any of us would have if we woke up and found out that we were apparently a completely different person. These often ended in assaults or escape attempts. In one case, he wound up in the next state.”  
  
“And after he manifested?” Zack asks.  
  
“As far as anyone can tell, Kevin might still be in there, but that’s an unknown. There’s only one verified personality in there, and he calls himself Snowflake and refuses to acknowledge that Kevin Condron ever existed.”  
  
“Shit,” Zack says quietly. “Can we… I don’t know…”  
  
“I asked,” Veda replies grimly. “Unfortunately for _Kevin_ , he’s stuck in a pretty shitty position: he has to do Snowflake’s time, but he needs the kind of help he can’t get in prison, and there aren’t any hospitals that have what’s needed to prevent Snowflake from escaping. At least, not that I’ve found so far.”  
  
“There has to be something we can do,” Mark says. “I mean…”  
  
Veda shrugs. “Maybe. I’ll look further into it when I have more time.”  
  
“So hang on, we missed a bit. What happened after he manifested?”  
  
“About a day after he manifested, Snowflake went missing from the hospital, which got a lot of coverage, because they’d noticed the new personality and someone noticed the forcefields, so they knew he was a paranormal. After that, he shows up in Vegas, where he robbed those three banks. Then, we _think_ he was behind four other robberies over two weeks, and then finally, Snowflake turns up in Los Angeles, doing amateur modelling, in between a few more robberies.”  
  
“In Los Angeles?” Zack asks, his eyebrows raised. “I thought that was a pretty hard field to break into.”  
  
Veda nods. “Exactly. Kevin Condron wasn’t very wealthy to start with, and he couldn’t hold down a job because of his condition, so Snowflake started off with pretty much nothing. From what I can tell, he was robbing banks just to get enough money to live on while he tried to break into the field.”  
  
“And it worked out for him?” Mark comments.

“Not as such,” Veda says. “See, his forcefields can’t be penetrated by normal technology. Once word of that got out, he got a lot of commissions to steal things for certain supervillains. He made enough from that to live as well as he wanted, until one day, it came back to bite him…”

 

  
  
Then:

Well, it wasn’t like he hadn’t expected it.  
Instead of flinching away from the gun that’s pointed between his eyes, Snowflake smiles. “{Gentlemen.}”

The one with the gun is wearing a mask that covers his entire face, but Snowflake can see his eyes, and they’re bleak.

No humour, then. Or sarcasm. Or snarking. No matter how much they deserve it.

“Snowflake?” the gunman asks.

Snowflake nods. Better to not risk a reply. Not yet.

“We’d like a word.”

Snowflake nods again.

“Inside, maybe?” another one says, almost affable.

In answer, Snowflake steps back to let them pass him. Best to look meek and obedient for now. They’ll let their guard down easier.

There’s five of them, he sees: the gunman, who steps back in turn to let the others through, keeping the gun trained on him. Behind him are two minions in black, in the kind of identical garb worn by twins, nameless henchmen or the unimaginative. The fourth is wearing a black leather skirt, a black jacket, no shirt and a wide smile. Part of his hair’s been dyed pink, and he hasn’t shaved in a while.

Snowflake knows him. The Zombie Princess.

_Shit._

The fifth…

_Oh fuck._

The fifth is a mountain of a man, similarly clad in black, wearing a mask that looks like it came out of a video game. He exudes power and cruelty, and even without seeing his eyes, Snowflake can tell that the man is just waiting for an excuse to hurt him.

Deucalion.

Well. _Now_ things are complicated.

He knows what they want, now.  
  
He also knows why he can’t give it to them.  
  
Plan A is out: there’s no way he can fight them.  
  
Plan B is out: he can’t use his forcefields without them knowing, and they won’t stand up to gunfire for long enough.  
  
Plan C might work.

Plan D might as well, though he’s never been good at running.

Time to stall, then, while he decides.  
  
He can hear the other two minions moving through the house, but he can’t follow them, because the gunman steps up to him and presses the gun between his eyes. Despite the hard, painful sensation, it doesn’t seem quite real.  
  
Deucalion says something that ends with “…now, Jimmy,” and in turn, the Zombie Princess- Jimmy, apparently- ushers the Titan of Titor inside, shutting the door behind him.

Deucalion doesn’t even glance at Snowflake as he walks past, and just for that, Snowflake casts all thoughts of running aside.  
  
_Who the fuck do you think you are?_  
  
Plan C is on.

He’s going to _end_ these jumped-up motherfuckers.  
  
He can hear the sound of the minions breaking something, and he manages to not wince. It’s not like he owns the house, but if that was his computer…  
  
Something scuttles past him, and Snowflake realises that there’s actually six of them.  
  
God knows who- or _what_ \- the last one is, though. It? He? She?- is wearing a thick black mask edged with white over its?- face, and it’s clad in blue and black that covers its whole body. It sort of… shuffles around in a half-crouch, constantly moving, twitching and flinching, until Jimmy snaps his fingers. At once, the creature goes still until Jimmy points to a corner. Immediately, the creature nearly runs to the corner and goes still, shaking a little like it’s anticipating a blow.  
  
Hmmm. That’s an interesting pet.  
  
Deucalion clears his throat, and everyone looks at him. He jerks his head, and Jimmy claps his hands. “All right, everyone, time for a discussion.”  
  
They practically herd Snowflake into the dining room, and from there, their movements are too practised to not have been decided beforehand: the minions, excepting the creature, sit themselves down at the table, with Deucalion at the head. Snowflake’s left standing next to the chair at the other end, the end that’s furthest away from the door.  
  
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And six enemies all ready to tear him apart.

He’s almost bored. But he can’t show that. Best to act intimidated.  
  
“Sit down,” Jimmy orders.  
  
Snowflake pulls the chair out, his movements awkward and jerky, and sits down.  
  
His right hand slides into his pants, into a hidden pocket, and touches a tiny package.  
  
“Let’s not mince words,” Jimmy starts. “We’re here because you stole something that belongs to Deucalion. And we want it back.”  
  
Snowflake stiffens a little. His fingers still, but then return to their task, opening the package and withdrawing a tiny disk, the size of his little fingernail and as thin as a quarter.  
  
Carefully, he drops it on the ground near his right foot. Once he’s found it with his foot, he brings his foot down hard, breaking the disc in two.  
  
Right. Now all he has to do is stall.  
  
“{I don’t have it,}” he says quietly, seemingly cowed.  
  
Jimmy nods, looking almost friendly. “Oh, we know that. You don’t steal to keep, do you?”  
  
“{No, I-}”  
  
“You steal on commission,” Jimmy says. “So all you have to do is tell us who hired you to steal the Eye of Tyr. That’s all.”  
  
Snowflake pauses slightly.  
  
It’s true: he was hired to steal the Eye of Tyr from Deucalion, and that’s exactly what he did.  
  
“{And then what?}” he asks.  
  
“And then we let you go,” Jimmy says, smiling pleasantly. “Promise.”  
  
_Oh, bullshit. You turn up at my house, put a gun to my head, and you think I’m stupid enough to believe that?_  
  
“{If they find out I told you-}” he stalls.  
  
“If you don’t tell us, you’re going to have a bad time,” Jimmy replies, still smiling, all the humour lost from his tone, no warmth left in his eyes.  
  
_And you think I’ll believe that you’ll let me go?_

It’s true, he did steal the Eye of Tyr from Deucalion, but he stole it for the person who sold it to Deucalion in the first place: Ultramantis Black. And when he handed the Eye to Ultramantis’ envoy, Delirious, Delirious took the Eye and shattered it into dozens of pieces, right there in front of Snowflake.

He can’t tell them that, of course. Not only is it a story they won’t want to hear, it’s also a story they have no reason to believe. And while he doesn’t know the backstory, he has no reason to betray Delirious to them. But… hmmm.

“{You won’t believe me,}” he admits. 

It should be working soon.

“Tell us,” Jimmy orders. “And we’ll be the ones deciding to believe you or not.”

“{Ultramantis Black,}” Snowflake says, dragging it out. “{I was hired to steal the Eye by Ultramantis Black.}”

There’s a long pause, and then the five of them exchange glances.  
  
“Ultramantis?” one of the two minions says. “But…”  
  
Jimmy snaps his fingers. “Of course! The curse!”  
  
Curse?  
  
“That’s how he was going to get around it! Use it, pass it on- and get someone to steal it back! Shit, it makes sense!”  
  
Well, at least something does. For a second, the thought of being cursed makes Snowflake’s spine tingle, but then it hits him: use it. He didn’t do anything with the Eye other than steal it and give it to Delirious. Hell, he didn’t even touch it with his bare hands.  
  
If he had to ‘use it’ to get cursed…  
  
Before he can think about it further, one of the minions collapses, his head hitting the table with a solid _thunk_. A few seconds later, the other minion’s out like a light.  
  
Jimmy jumps to his feet, turning toward Snowflake. “You! You-”  
  
His eyes roll up, and he collapses to the floor, nearly taking the chair with him. A second later, the gunman’s out too.  
  
That leaves Deucalion.  
  
There’s a long second where neither of them speaks, and then Deucalion gets to his feet, shoving the chair away from him so hard it hits the wall and breaks.  
  
Snowflake doesn’t bother getting to his feet.  
  
The voice that comes from under Deucalion’s mask is low, and filled with anger. “You _dare?_ ”  
  
“{I could ask the same of you,}” Snowflake says. “{I don’t know who you think you are, and frankly, I don’t care. But you come into my house, point a gun at my face and act like I’m nothing? You’re going down, you dumb motherfucker.}”  
  
Deucalion actually _growls_ before he shouts. “Snow Troll!”  
  
What?  
  
Before Snowflake can react, the creature throws itself at Deucalion’s feet, trembling.

  
“Witness this,” Deucalion growls. “I will _rend_ this importunate thief. I will _break_ him and _crush_ him and make him wish he was never born. And when I am done…”  
  
Before he can reply, he sways slightly and falls, hitting the ground like a felled oak.

Snowflake lets out a breath and relaxes. “{Christ, what a fucking moron.}”

He steps past the fallen minions and stops, staring down at Deucalion’s fallen body. “{You know, I was just going to leave, but for all of that? Fuck you. You deserve this.}”

Less than a minute later, he’s on the phone with 911. But he’s not using his own voice, he’s using… the other. Kevin. A name that makes him twitch.

“Yeah, Deucalion… big motherfucker with a black mask… and Zombie Princess… and some other guys, too, I don’t know their names…”

“Volgar,” a voice says from somewhere near the floor. “Haack. Slaash.” A pause. “And Snow Troll.”

“Volgar, Haack and Slaash,” Snowflake repeats. “Send the strongest guys you’ve got. They’re unconscious, but they might wake up any time.”

Not for an hour at least, he knows, but no point in repeating that.

He hangs up and stares down at Snow Troll. “{Who are you, anyway?}”

There’s another pause. “Dog.”

Snowflake blinks. “{What?}"  
  
“Their dog.” 

It takes a second for him to understand, and then he grimaces. “{Shit. Look… Snow Troll, I’m getting the fuck out of here. You want to stay, fine, but all these guys are going to be in jail soon. Stay here, run, I don’t care- do whatever the fuck you want. But don’t try to backstab me, understand?}”  
  
Snow Troll doesn’t move, but Snowflake doesn’t have time to wait for a response. He bolts upstairs, going room to room, grabbing all his things.  
  
At least this isn’t his house: he was renting, and he’d barely unpacked. It takes him only a few minutes to get everything and do a double check, and then he’s racing for the door.  
  
He stops as he passes the dining room: Snow Troll is standing by the door, just… waiting.  
  
“{I don’t have time for this,}” Snowflake snaps. “{If you-}”  
  
“I go. With you,” Snow Troll says, its- his? voice sounding hopeful. “Please.”

Snowflake opens his mouth to say no, but he finds himself stopping. “{If this is some kind of doublecross…}”

Snow Troll shakes his head frantically. “No. No! Please?”  
  
Shit.

Snowflake bites his lip and decides. “{Fuck! All right, fine. Come on, there’s no time!}”  
  
Snow Troll stays frozen for a second, and then he turns and follows Snowflake out into the night.

 

  
  
Now:

“Shit, I remember this one,” Mark says, disgusted. “It was a pretty big coup for the local cops. Even though they didn’t _do_ anything.” 

“I’m sensing a grudge,” Veda comments unnecessarily.

“They should have called us,” Mark replies, annoyance evident in every word. “A complete stranger calls and says that a whole gang of fucking dangerous villains _just happen_ to be unconscious, ready to be arrested? Come on, that just _screams_ trap! But _no_ , these clowns want to be heroes, so they just go in like they’re any other criminals! Fucking morons! And since they got _lucky_ \- that’s all it was, don’t kid- and it wasn’t a trap, they think they can get away with it every fucking time, so they’ll just get themselves killed by the first villain who actually does their fucking research!”

“And now, the weather,” Zack comments dryly.

“Oh, fuck off, Zack.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Veda says with a pointed look, “Deucalion and his gang all got locked up, and Snowflake got away with it. Which sounds like a happy ending, until you go into the background.”

“Somehow, I don’t think I’m gonna like this,” Zack says.

“Oh, you won’t,” Veda says cheerily. “See, Deucalion and his gang were doing their damn best to take over Philadelphia. They’d been working on it for a couple of years, and they’d taken out a lot of villains and heroes to get as far as they did. By the DOP’s estimate, they had control of nearly half the city. So when they all got arrested…”

“Oh. A power vacuum,” Mark says glumly.

Veda nods. “About a month later, once they mopped up the blood, the other gangs had pretty much wiped themselves out. The local heroes- mostly their leader, Icarus- managed to get the city back under control, and it’s stayed under control ever since. Snowflake didn’t stick around, of course, he’s not an idiot. He ran west, but it wasn’t far enough.”

“So what got him? Or, should I say, _who?_ ” Zack asks.

“A gang in Kansas who were Deucalion’s allies, and weren’t too happy about their friend being in prison. They lured Snowflake in with the prospect of a job, and then knocked him out and threw him to the cops. Tit for tat.”

“I’m surprised Deucalion hasn’t tried to off Snowflake yet,” Mark comments.

“He can’t,” Veda says. “At least, _he_ can’t order a hit. He’s in C Wing. No outside contact. Zombie Princess took a deal, joined the DOP. All the others either repented or are quietly serving their sentences, excepting one of Deucalion’s minions who’s been AWOL since Snowflake got caught. Snowflake’s behaving himself, mostly. He hasn’t tried to break out, anyway.”

“How would they know if he did? I mean, what could they do to stop him?”

“Oh, we’ve got that covered,” Zack says. “Anklet that monitors his location and status. If it gets hacked, it sends an SOS to the overseeing computer. If he tries to take it off, it sends an SOS and jolts him. It can be remotely triggered to inject a fast-acting sedative. Most of the prisoners in the Citadel wear them.”

“You guys don’t fuck around, do you?” Mark asks.

Zack grins. “No, no we do not.”

“Well, then,” Veda says, getting up. “Why don’t we go see what Snowflake has to say?”

 

 

 

  
When Zack walks into the cell, the first thing he wonders is if he’s suddenly been teleported into some weird fetish porn. The cell’s hung with flimsy curtains that barely block any light, and there’s a strong scent of incense, something exotic and flowery.  
  
Snowflake’s reclining on his bunk like he wants someone to draw him like their French girls, and his face lights up when the trio walk in.  
  
The second thing Zack wonders is how the guy isn’t freezing, because he’s shirtless, wearing ridiculously thin beige harem pants and some kind of coat… shawl… _thing_ that wouldn’t provide anyone with warmth unless they set it on fire.  
  
Oh, and he’s wearing a flower crown, too. And black eyeshadow smeared across his face, around his eyes, with a miniscule tiara perched right in the middle of his brow.  
  
This guy is _insane_.  
  
“{Lovely to meet you all,}” he drawls in a low, husky voice.  
  
Veda takes it in stride, sitting down at the table opposite the bunk. “Snowflake. Thank you for agreeing to see us.”  
  
Snowflake blows a kiss to her. “{Marduk, is it? You’re just as lovely as I’ve heard.}”  
  
Veda smiles despite herself. “Thank you. My colleagues are Guardian and Lieutenant Andrews, of the RS.”  
  
Snowflake doesn’t seem at all fazed, glancing over at Mark and Zack with a twinkle in his eyes. “{Gentlemen.}”  
  
Despite his welcoming civility, there’s an undertone to Snowflake’s voice that has Zack on edge, his eyes darting from Veda to Mark. A subtle hint of mockery. Like he’s planning something.  
  
Zack’s on edge in an instant, his mind assessing the room’s potential as a battlefield while his body tenses, waiting to spring into action-  
  
_Relax_ , he tells himself. _It’s just a conversation._  
  
He’s not convinced, though. There’s something about being in a small cell with an unfriendly paranormal who has a very versatile power that just doesn’t spell ‘all clear’, though he can’t imagine what.  
  
Deliberately, he leans against the wall and folds his arms casually.  
  
“I understand that you’ve been informed of the offer we’re about to make you,” Veda starts.  
  
Snowflake nods slightly. “{None of the details, just that it was an invitation to join some kind of mission.}”  
  
Veda nods, all business. “Correct. Before we get into the details, I need to tell you- there is a substantial chance that everyone going on this mission may wind up getting killed. We have to be frank about that. Everyone needs to know the risks.”  
  
Snowflake looks… intrigued, strangely enough. “{When you say _substantial_ , do you have an exact figure?}”  
  
“No,” Veda admits. “To be frank, we have no idea what, if anything is in there.”  
  
“{Ooh,}” Snowflake murmurs, his eyes lighting up. “{Now I simply _have_ to know more.}”  
  
Veda glances at Zack, who nods and takes over. “It’s a recon mission. The target is a populated area that went dark several weeks ago. There’s been no movement sighted and no attempts at communication in that time, which is very abnormal.”  
  
“{So, I take it the mission is to go find out what happened?}” Snowflake asks.  
  
“Sort of,” Veda interjects. “The mission is to find out what, if anything, is in there. But that could be anything from nothing at all to a whole bunch of dead people to an alien invasion, for all we know.”  
  
Snowflake nods slowly. “{So out of curiosity, what happens if we find out the cause? If it is an alien invasion, say?}”  
  
“Then we get the hell out of there and call in the big guns,” Zack replies. “This is a recon mission, not some fantasy story. Nobody’s going to expect a handful of people to take down an alien invasion alone.”  
  
“{What if it’s a lesser cause?}” Snowflake asks. “{Like, there was some kind of natural disaster?}”  
  
“Then we’ll probably take a stab at restoring order,” Zack says with a shrug. “But if it gets too hard, then we get out of there. The chance of someone getting killed might be high, but we’re not aiming to get anyone killed.”  
  
“{So why ask me?}” Snowflake ponders. “{I’m not a fighter.}”  
  
“No, but I understand that your forcefields have stopped bullets,” Veda replies. “We’ll need good defences.”  
  
“{Correct,}” Snowflake replies, almost smug. “{I see your point. So what’s in this for me? What do I get if I go along and we pull it off?}”  
  
“Your sentence cut in half,” Mark says simply.  
  
Everyone else jumps, having forgotten that he was there.  
  
Snowflake looks genuinely astonished. “{Seriously?}”  
  
Veda nods. “Like I said, there’s a very real risk of everyone getting killed. You’re not a soldier, you’re a prisoner- this is something far outside your usual experiences. If you take this risk and succeed, you deserve a fair reward.”  
  
“{So why send prisoners?}” Snowflake asks. “{Why go to all this trouble when you can send soldiers? It’s their job.}”  
  
“That’s classified,” Zack cuts in.  
  
Snowflake shrugs dismissively. “{Fine. What’s the catch? Aside from the bit where I might die.}”  
  
“Everyone who goes on the mission will be implanted with tracking devices,” Veda replies carefully. “The devices can’t be cut out or shut off without severely incapacitating you, and they also contain lethal poison, in case someone gets captured by the enemy. If there is an enemy.”  
  
Snowflake rolls his eyes. “{Oh, the old ‘disobey and you die’ line. How… droll.}”  
  
“And that,” Veda admits.  
  
“If you agree,” Zack starts, “then you need to do two things: first is follow orders, second is take it seriously. This isn’t a game, and frankly, we can’t afford to drag anyone along if they’re too busy making jokes and fucking around to actually do what they’re told.”  
  
Snowflake purses his lips and sighs dramatically. “{I _suppose_ I can do that.”}  
  
Veda leans forward. “So you’re on board?”  
  
Snowflake nods. “{I think I am.}”

“Excellent,” Veda says. “Welcome to the team.”  


  
“Well, that went well,” Mark comments once they’ve left the cell and are safely out of earshot.  
  
“Suspiciously,” Zack agrees thoughtfully.  
  
“Don’t be so paranoid,” Veda says, rolling her eyes. “We’ve got our first recruit.”  
  
“So he’s not planning anything?” Zack asks her.  
  
“He might be a bit snarky, but he really wants that reduced sentence,” Veda informs him. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble with him.”  
  
“Good,” Zack replies. “Let’s get going. Who’s next?”  
  
“Messenger,” Veda replies after a glance at her tablet.

“Oh, wonderful,” Mark says. “Assassins. Just what I always wanted.”


	3. the conversation: messenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You said/‘don’t blame him for all the slaughter that he brings’/you said/‘it’s not his fault, even Jesus needs to sleep’”- Angelspit, “As It Is In Heaven”

Then:  
  
“Sir?”  
  
“Ah, Detective Royce. You wanted to see me.”  
  
“Yes. Sir, we’ve got… something.”  
  
“Care to clarify?”  
  
“Well… a lot of it is speculation, but-”  
  
“Please tell me this isn’t the damn Illuminati _again_.”  
  
“Uh… sort of?”  
  
“Oh, for…”  
  
“We do have clear evidence of a crime, sir.”  
  
“…all right, Royce. Shut the door and tell me about it.”  
  
“Sir, two days ago an anonymous individual left us a tip regarding the death of Damien Sandow.”  
  
“Sandow?”  
  
“Award-winning journalist known for a series of articles investigating certain phenomena. He was especially known for being scrupulous, honest, and never making things up, though a bit condescending.”  
  
“Right, yeah, he did those articles about the UFOs.”  
  
“Two weeks ago, Sandow was found dead in his apartment in New York. Someone cut his head off with something like an axe. In addition, the coroner found that someone had extracted roughly a litre of blood from the body. No idea what happened to it. There were no signs of a struggle and no explanation as to how the murderer got in- neighbours didn’t hear anyone open the door, Sandow didn’t have guests over, no signs of a break-in. An investigation found that Sandow had been working on a series of articles about the Illuminati, and once that got out, the public at large decided that the Illuminati murdered him.”  
  
“Wonderful. Just what we need.”  
  
“The thing is, Sandow’s articles actually indicated that there was no evidence that the Illuminati exist- at least not in the form known to popular culture. That being said, Sandow referenced several organisations that were similar to the popular image of the Illuminati, or that were rumoured to be similar, in detail, so a working theory is that one of those organisations had him killed for talking about them.”  
  
“So it was a contract hit by a paranormal, fine, kick it over to Investigations…”  
  
“Sir, I think this is our business. The informant stated that Sandow’s death came from a secret society that has non-humans among its members.”  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake-”  
  
“ _And_ , the informant provided a list of names. People who were allegedly killed on behalf of this society.”  
  
“All right, I’m listening.”  
  
“I spent the last two days doing research on the names. All of the people on the list were killed in the exact same manner as Sandow, missing litre of blood and all. What’s strange is how random the victims were- everyone from a famous lawyer in England to a homeless guy in Russia.”   
  
“Huh.”  
  
“Because the victims were so diverse and from so many differing countries, nobody had connected them before. Thing is, two of the victims were killed within a day of each other. They were at the opposite ends of Russia, and I did the research: at the time, weather conditions made it impossible for anyone to fly, train or drive from one end to the other in that time frame.”  
  
“Right. OK, I’m with you. We’ve got a paranormal serial killer- or _killers_ \- who may or may not be a hitman. Where do we go from here?”  
  
“The source said they’d call back with more information, if we promise to keep them safe from the killers.”  
  
“Done. You know who to call.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  


  
  
Now:  
  
“I fucking hate assassins,” Zack says when Zack and Veda join him at the cafeteria. “Just want to say that.”  
  
Veda tips sugar into her coffee and inhales the steam. “Duly noted.”  
  
“Never met any,” Mark admits. “Gone up against a few, but never actually met them in person.”  
  
“Like, OK, some of them at least admit that they’re criminals,” Zack explains, stirring his coffee so hard drops fly out. “But a lot of them are the kind of arseholes who’ll say they’re just doing a job, like their job isn’t to fucking _murder_ people. And a lot of the ones who work for the really rich fuckers act like they think they’re lawyers- they can’t talk about their clients, they can’t discuss anything their clients might have asked them to do.” He glares down at the table, coffee momentarily forgotten. “They’re just common killers. And they hate it when anyone says that. Ruins their little delusion that they’re _better_ than that.”

  
“You didn’t have a problem when we were discussing taking him on,” Mark says. “This isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”   
  
Zack swallows a few mouthfuls of coffee and pauses for a moment. “Probably not,” he says finally. “Don’t get me wrong, I think we can use him. I just… I’m not looking forward to this conversation.”  
  
Veda shrugs. “It’s cool. Let us do the talking and just stand around looking intimidating.”  
  
Zack nods. “I can do that.”  
  
“Who is this guy, anyway?” Mark asks.  
  
Veda flips through the file and starts reciting. “Tommy End, also known as Aleister Black, Dutch citizen, originally from Amsterdam. Apparently he was a pretty normal kid, except that multiple teachers and friends said that he was obsessed with the occult.”  
  
Mark shrugs. “Eh, lots of people are.”  
  
“Depends. Are we talking goth, pagan, or conspiracy theory?” Zack asks.  
  
“Bit of all three, with an emphasis on mythology, apparently,” Veda replies.  
  
“I’ve heard crazier,” Zack admits.  
  
“So he graduates from high school and goes into college, studies history and comparative religion,” Veda says. “Gets his degree, and then he just falls off the radar. There’s no information on him whatsoever. No clue about where he lives, what his job is, anything- the only thing they know is that he hasn’t been reported dead. Not that _reported_ means shit when there’s a lot of places where you’d be lucky if anyone gives enough of a fuck to make a report.”   
  
“So there’s nothing at all?” Zack asks.  
  
Veda holds up a finger. “There’s one thing. He went through school and college with a childhood friend, a guy called Michael Dante. Dante dropped off the radar at the exact same time as End.”  
  
“Ah,” Mark says.  
  
“So that’s the official story. The _unofficial_ story is a hell of a lot different.”  
  
“Hit me,” Zack says.  
  
Veda grimaces. “OK, here’s where we go into a lot of speculation, so don’t quote me on this.”  
  
“OK.”  
  
“You know how the whole Illuminati myth is still around today, right?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Well, ever since paranormals have been around, the conspiracy theorists and myth geeks have been going nuts. Some assholes will just take anything as a reason to believe that something didn’t happen the way it actually did, you know? They want to feel _special._ ”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“So there’s a hell of a lot of variations on the Illuminati myth, but the one we’re interested in turned up about two and a half years ago, when an anonymous person contacts the New York branch of the Department of Paranormals, claiming to have evidence about a secret society akin to the Illuminati.”  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
“The source gave the DOP- specifically, their Resources division, the one that handles all the conspiracy theories and the like- a list of people that they claimed had been murdered by hitmen working for a secret society that had nonhumans among their number. The DOP weren’t taking the ‘secret society’ part very seriously, but they did the research and found that all the people on the list had been killed via the exact same method.”  
  
“So then what?”  
  
“Over the next few months, the DOP and the source get friendly. They’re keeping the source safe, the source gives them more info. Now, they haven’t divulged a lot of what the source said, but apparently the source told them that this society has its fingers in a lot of pies around the world, that there are definite non-humans among the leadership, and that they have hitmen who take out anyone who gets too close. Doesn’t matter who they are, how respected they are, what they know- if you accidentally stumble onto this society, even if you don’t know it, they’ll somehow find out, and they’ll kill you.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“And the thing is, the source names the hitmen. Specifically, the two names they gave the DOP were-”  
  
“Michael Dante and Tommy End?”  
  
“Bingo,” Veda says. “The source also said that both men had been given powers by the non-humans. Neither man was a recorded paranormal, so that part is actually possible.”  
  
“Did they say anything about what these non-humans are actually like?” Mark asks curiously. “I mean, are we talking aliens, mutant animals, what?”  
  
Veda shakes her head. “If they did, the DOP hasn’t seen fit to pass that on. It probably got grabbed by Homeland or someone and now nobody’s allowed to say anything about it.”  
  
“Damn,” Mark mutters.  
  
“So the DOP’s hiding their source somewhere, and they’re giving them all this information, and this is going on for about a year,” Veda continues. “And they’re making a pretty big deal about it, because all the information the source is giving them is checking out, and the stuff they can’t verify seems legit, right? And then it occurs to them that there’s something weird about the whole thing: all these people who found out anything about the society got killed, but here’s the source, giving them all this info, and they’re not dead.”  
  
“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” Zack admits.  
  
“Thing is, the source has spent most of this time completely terrified, so they’re not obviously stringing the DOP along,” Veda continues. “Before you ask, I wasn’t told how the source got all this information in the first place, so I don’t know if they were selling out the society or anything.”  
  
“So what happened?” Mark asks.  
  
Veda grimaces. “Well, the DOP had been guarding this guy around the clock, right? Everything’s going fine, and then one day there’s a little misdirection…”  


 

  
  
Then:  
  
“Detective Royce, DOP Resources.”  
  
_“Echo Alpha three Sierra Hotel eight.”_  
  
“Tango Delta four Bravo nine. How’s it going?”  
  
_“Uh, yeah, look- the last guys left five minutes ago, but I don’t think anyone’s around, maybe I just haven’t looked-”_  
  
“OK, give me a second.” She puts the phone down and calls out. “Morgan? Give me the status on the 4:00 changeover?”  
  
The reply comes instantly. “As of 4:00, Akam and Young are still there. Wolfe and Rezar are caught up in traffic, they should be there in ten or so.”  
  
Royce frowns. “That’s odd, because I’m on the phone now and apparently Akam and Young have already left.”  
  
There’s a long pause, and then Royce bites back a curse. “Call Akam and Young, make sure they get right back there _now_ , understand? Right now!”  
  
With Morgan gone, she takes a second to calm herself before she picks her phone up again. Can’t scare the informant. It’s just a tiny mistake, nothing to worry about.  
  
“OK, there’s been a bit of a mix-up, but everything’s fine.”  
  
_“Oh, good, yeah, that’s- that’s good. Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb anyone…”_  
  
“You’re not disturbing anyone,” Royce reassures him. “It’s OK.”  
  
_“Right, thanks…”_  
  
There’s a long pause, so long Royce wonders if the call’s dropped out, and then he abruptly speaks again. “ _Uh, should I hang up, or…”_  
  
“Stay on the line for now,” Royce tells him. “Just until we’ve confirmed that everything’s in order.”  
  
_“All right, sure, that’s- oh, oh fuck! Oh shit! Fuck!”_  
  
“What? What is it?” Royce nearly shouts.  
  
_“It’s, he- he walked out of the shadows, he came out of the fucking shadows!”_  
  
“ _Who?_ ” Royce actually does shout.  
  
_“It’s him, it’s- fuck, End, Tommy End, oh fuck-”_  
  
“Where the _fuck_ are Akam and Young?” Royce screams at Morgan. “Code red! Code red!”  
  
_“-oh God, help!_ ”  
  
“What about Dante? Is he there?” Royce half-shouts. Later, she’ll kick herself for it, but at the time, it’s the only thing she can think to say.  
  
_“I can’t see- fuck, please, no, don’t! Stay back! I, I have a- oh shit-”_  
  
The sound diminishes slightly, and there’s a slight _thud_ as the phone is dropped. Even with the lower volume, Royce can easily hear everything: the muffled thuds and exclamations, the swearing and pleas for help, and then… everything just stops.  
  
There’s a _thud,_ but this one’s softer and more… organic, and Royce can hear liquid dripping onto a surface. At first, nothing happens, and then she hears someone breathing into the phone.  
  
For a long moment, she isn’t sure whether or not to speak.  
  
She doesn’t have to decide, though. It’s done for her.  
  
_“Detective Royce. I apologise for the disturbance.”_ The voice is young, male, carrying a distinct but clear European accent. “ _I look forward to seeing you shortly.”_  
  
Before Royce can muster a response, the speaker hangs up.  
  


 

Five minutes later, when Akam and Young burst into the apartment, guns drawn, the scene that meets their eyes resembles something from a Mafia film. The apartment is small, subdued, perfectly clean and neat… except for the body of the source, sprawled over the tiled floor. In life, he was a tall, thin white man, unremarkable and easy to pass in a crowd. In death, his head still has an expression of frozen horror fixed on his face. His blood has formed a pool, still slowly spreading away from the body.  
  
His killer is seated in a kitchen chair next to the body, quite relaxed.  
  
He’s fairly unremarkable himself: tall, white, brown hair and a bushy beard. He’s wearing a suit, and it somehow escaped getting sprayed with blood. The only thing in his hand is something Young recognises as a straight razor, safely folded.  
  
But somehow, it’s not any of it that makes Akam freeze: it’s the look in the man’s eyes. If he didn’t know better, Akam would swear it was… _serenity_.   
  
The man slides the razor into his shirt pocket and slowly raises his hands. “Gentlemen. My name is Tommy End. I killed that man. I surrender.”  
  
It takes a second before either detective can remember to react.  


 

  
Now:  
  
“But why wait so long?” Mark asks, halfway through his cup of coffee. “From what you said, these guys were killing anyone who’d even heard of them, right? So why didn’t they just off the guy before he could tell anyone anything?”  
  
“That I don’t know,” Veda admits. “And it’s a good question.”  
  
“And it was just End? Not Dante?”  
  
“Correct,” Veda says. “No trace of Dante whatsoever.”  
  
“And he just surrendered,” Zack comments. “He just calmly sat there, waiting for the cops to arrive.”  
  
Veda nods. “Not to mention, he fully cooperated with the police, pleaded guilty, didn’t ask for a lawyer. Which is why everyone thinks the society wants him in prison for a reason.”  
  
“But he didn’t say _why_ he killed the guy, did he?” Zack asks.  
  
Veda shakes her head. “Nope. They’ve interrogated him like a dozen times and he’s barely answered anything. He’s admitted to killing the guy, but not to killing anyone else on the list. They asked him why, he just said ‘it was necessary’. Wouldn’t specify why. They asked him who he works for, he just says he can’t answer that. Hell, they asked him where he’s been for years and he says he doesn’t want to answer that either.”  
  
“So I take it there’s more than a few people who want you to interrogate him next, then,” Zack comments wryly.  
  
Mark swallows his mouthful of coffee abruptly in his haste to speak. “Whoa, hang on. I thought that was _really_ illegal?”  
  
“Oh, it is,” Veda says. “That is, it’s very illegal to just stick a telepath in a room with someone with the expectation that they’ll just suck all the person’s thoughts and secrets out of their head. You can have a telepath read someone’s mind if the person is fully informed and agrees to it beforehand, _or_ , you can have a telepath in the room if they’re an official of some kind. Say, a note-taker at a hearing. _But_ , generally in those cases it’s ruled that anything they pick up is inadmissible in court.”  
  
“Oh, right,” Mark says. “So you’re allowed to make the pitches because you’re helping arrange this mission.”  
  
Veda nods. “And most of the time, what I’m picking up isn’t going to be relevant to any court cases. In this one, either End agrees to let me read him, though I can’t imagine why, or he says no and therefore anything I get is inadmissible. But I do need to be there, as the person helping to arrange this mission.”  
  
“Hang on, hang on,” Mark muses. “Say you pick something up, like… I don’t know, who he works for. Like, names. Can the cops use that if you tell them what you picked up, but they don’t admit that they got it from you?”  
  
Veda shakes her head. “Nope. Well, theoretically, but no. They can use it if they can prove that they got it from another source, but if they use it and it’s obvious that they had to have got it from me, it’ll be ruled inadmissible.”  
  
Mark frowns thoughtfully.  
  
“Trust me, they’ve already thought of pretty much everything,” Veda advises him.  
  
Zack coughs. “If you two are done with the legal talk, can we get this done?”  
  


  
There’s something distinctly _off_ about Tommy End, and the only comforting part is that Mark knows he’s not the only one to notice.  
  
It’s… well, everything. The entire package. It’s the way he just sits in his chair, calm as can be, like he could sit there until the world ended. It’s the blank look in his eyes, like he just shuts down when not needed. It’s the bit where a huge, muscly, tattooed man with a massive beard is somehow managing to resemble a puppet whose strings haven’t been pulled yet.  
  
The first thing Veda does when she walks into the cell is flinch and pull back, staring at him with what could be amazement, horror, or even revulsion. It’s blatant, and yet he doesn’t seem to notice.  
  
Zack nudges her. “You OK?”  
  
“Fine,” she mutters, flinching.  
  
Zack drops down into the other chair, opposite End. Mark stands next to him, trying to look casual, and Veda steps back into the corner next to the door, as far away from End as possible.  
  
There’s a long pause as nobody speaks, and then, just as Zack opens his mouth, End looks up, suddenly animated.  
  
“Ah. You’re the officials they told me about?”  
  
“That’s us,” Zack says, even managing to be amiable.   
  
“So you’re… Guardian, then,” End comments. “Which would make _you_ the lieutenant, and she must be Marduk. The telepath.”  
  
Veda manages a curt nod.  
  
End looks at her curiously, and then smiles a little. “Don’t worry. I don’t mind if you read me.”  
  
Veda smiles awkwardly and nods back.  
  
End turns back to Zack. “I understand you have an offer for me.”  
  
Zack nods and outlines the situation. By the end of it, End is looking intrigued.  
  
“I’ll admit, I am interested,” he says. “But may I ask, why come to me? I’m not exactly combat-oriented.”  
  
Mark shrugs. “You teleport, right?”  
  
“Something like that,” End replies casually.  
  
Zack purses his lips. “In the event of a worst-case scenario, anyone who can get out- such as a teleporter- would be required to tell our superiors exactly what happened and what’s in there. In a better scenario, you might be required to get as many people to safety as possible.”  
  
“How likely is either of those scenarios?” End asks bluntly.  
  
Mark grimaces. “We just don’t know. If we knew what we were up against, we’d have some idea, but… no clue. Maybe the place is empty, or maybe it’s full of monsters who can kill us with a glance.”  
  
End nods slowly. “Well, assuming I don’t get killed, I could do both of those. We would be taking cameras and such, right?”  
  
“Of course,” Zack replies. “But for all we know, they may end up getting broken- by accident or by enemy interference.”  
  
End nods again. “I see.” He frowns. “In the event that we succeed, what- if any- reward would there be?”  
  
“Your sentence cut in half,” Mark says.  
  
End’s expression doesn’t change. “I see.”  
  
“You’re not interested?” Zack asks.  
  
“Oh, I’m interested,” End replies. “But could I have some time to think about it?”  
  
“Of course,” Zack replies.  
  
“I won’t be long,” End says almost nicely. “A couple of hours, at the most.”  
  
Zack glances from Mark to Veda and nods.  
  


  
The trio say nothing once they’ve emerged from the cell, remaining silent until they’re several corridors away, safely out of anyone’s hearing.  
  
“What happened?” Zack asks, turning to Veda. “Did he try to prime-time you?”  
  
“Try to what?” Mark asks, confused.   
  
“No, he didn’t,” Veda replies. “Thank God.”  
  
Zack turns to Mark. “Prime-time. Slang for deliberately thinking about things like murder, rape, gore and so on to freak out anyone who might be reading your mind.”  
  
Mark frowns. “Does that actually work? I mean, I thought most telepaths can’t turn it off?”  
  
“Yeah, we mostly can’t,” Veda agrees. “The thing is, most people think that all telepaths can not only read minds, they can go into people’s memories and so on. There’s different degrees of telepath, and the general public tends to believe that all telepaths are just waiting for an excuse to go into their minds and find all their dark secrets.”  
  
“Whereas in reality, most telepaths don’t give a fuck?” Mark guesses.  
  
Veda nods. “People always think that other people care more about them than they actually do. So they think that a telepath will automatically try to read their mind and find out their secrets unless they do something to make them stop.”  
  
“That must suck,” Mark says. “For you, I mean.”  
  
Veda groans. “You have _no_ idea. I mean, yeah, OK, I am reading their minds, but fuck, it’s not like I _want_ to!”  
  
“And you can’t turn it off,” Mark says sympathetically.  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“So does prime-timing work?” Mark repeats.  
  
Veda waves her hand dubiously. “Yes and no. If you have a telepath who can turn it off, then yeah, unless they’ve got a strong stomach, they’ll probably turn it off. Thing is, there aren’t many telepaths who can turn it off who won’t have done it already, you know?”  
  
“Gotcha.”  
  
“In my case? No, it doesn’t work. I’m still stuck reading them- and everyone else.”  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So what’s up with End?” Zack asks.  
  
“He’s _creepy_ ,” Veda says bluntly. “He’s… ugh, that was nasty.”  
  
“I thought you said he wasn’t prime-timing you?”  
  
“He wasn’t. That’s the thing. Look… either of you ever met anyone in a cult?”  
  
They both nod.  
  
“I don’t mean in combat, I mean socially.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You know how… happy they are? Like, they believe they’re exactly where they should be, they have everything they’ve ever wanted, everything’s perfect?”  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
“End’s like that. But worse.”  
  
“…how?”  
  
“I didn’t really get a sense of what the non-humans are, but I can tell you that they’re the real leaders of this society he’s in. And End… he’s like a puppet. Or a soldier. Both. He’s just… completely serene, because his bosses told him to surrender and go to jail and wait for orders, so that’s what he’s doing, and he doesn’t need to know more because his bosses want him there, so that’s all there is to it.”  
  
Mark and Zack exchange a long glance, and Veda glares at them. “Don’t- don’t do that. Don’t give me that shit.”  
  
Zack holds his hands up placatingly. “Sorry. It doesn’t sound all that creepy, but I’m not a telepath.”  
  
Veda frowns and then sighs. “Look, he’s fucked up, OK?”  
  
Mark nods. “OK, fine. Should we take him along?”  
  
Veda nods back. “If he agrees, he’ll do whatever you say. I’m just glad I’m not going.”  
  
“So what’s he doing now?” Mark asks. “If he’s waiting for orders…”  
  
“Wait, that’s a good point,” Zack says abruptly. “I can get access on my laptop…”  
  
“Cafeteria,” Veda says. “It’s got what we need.”

  
  
  
By the time they’re seated in the back corner of the cafeteria, Zack’s got his laptop out, working on getting the damn thing to access the internet. It takes a few minutes of typing and turning the connection off and on again, but he gets there.  
  
“OK, looks like he’s just… sitting there. Been sitting there since we left. Oh, wait- he’s moving.”  
  
The trio crowd around the computer, staring intensely as the minute figure of Tommy End stands. He walks over to a small bag sitting on a shelf, rummages through it and pulls out a stick of white chalk. He then drops to his knees and starts drawing.   
  
In less than a minute, he’s completed the drawing: a five-pointed star in a circle, the centre a pentagram. He takes five tea-light candles from the same shelf, sets them in the circle, one to each section between the star’s points, and lights them.  
  
“Is he allowed to do that?” Mark asks. “I mean, he’s permitted to do this magic shit?”  
  
“Officially, it’s down as part of his religion, so yeah, he’s cleared,” Veda replies. “So long as it’s not used in any escape attempt, or to hurt anyone- and they check, trust me.”  
  
The last thing End does is take down a small object from the shelf. He makes a swift movement, and the object extends: a straight razor.  
  
“Hang on, he’s allowed a fucking straight razor?” Mark asks in disbelief.  
  
“Oh, there’s rules about that, too,” Zack says. “It has to be in sight of the cameras at all times- no putting it in that bag, or under anything. He can’t take it outside, and he has to leave it on the shelf if anyone goes in.”  
  
“He clearly doesn’t shave. What the hell would he need it for?” Mark asks.  
  
On screen, End removes his shirt, revealing an impressive series of tattoos. He drops to one knee, holds his left arm over the pentagram in the centre of the circle, and makes a long, swift cut down the length of his arm.  
  
“That,” Veda says simply.  
  
Blood spurts from the cut, falling onto the ground inside the pentagram. It forms a quickly-growing puddle, but somehow, it doesn’t cross or mar the chalk, or soak into the floor.  
  
“Jesus,” Zack mutters.  
  
End’s arm is stained rust-red, but the cut visibly closes, leaving no trace of its presence.  
  
Mark whistles softly. “Man. Regeneration, huh?”  
  
“Yeah. Wish I had it,” Veda admits.  
  
“Don’t we all,” Zack replies.  
  
With his wound healed, End places the razor on the floor next to the circle and removes the rest of his clothes, placing them on the bed. He kneels in front of the circle and bows his head, hands together in prayer, mouth visibly moving.  
  
For a long moment, nothing happens, and then the blood begins to gleam.  
  
It then just- vanishes.  
  
“What the _fuck?_ ” Mark exclaims.  
  
End stops speaking and tilts his head lower. Almost as if in response, several of the marks on his body begin to glow: one on his back, between his shoulder blades; one on his left arm; the third on his right thigh.  
  
“Holy _shit_ ,” Zack whispers.  
  
“You guys recognise those marks?” Veda asks, leaning in. After a second, Zack types away, and they get a closer view of them.  
  
“That’s- brimstone. Sulfur. The alchemical symbol, the Leviathan Cross,” Zack says. “On his back.”  
  
Veda nods. “And that’s mercury on his arm…”  
  
“Which makes salt on his leg,” Zack completes. “The three primes.”  
  
Mark lets out a horrified noise. “Holy shit. That’s not… those aren’t tattoos. They’re _brands_.”  
  
“Brands?” Veda asks, aghast. “But… they’re _massive_. Who would- _why?_ ”  
  
“Remind me to never get mixed up with alien cults,” Zack says after a second.  
  
“You really need a reminder?” Mark asks.  
  
“Good point.”  
  
End hasn’t moved, his head still down. It’s more than half a minute before he blows the candles out and gets up.  
  
Instead of dressing or cleaning up, though, he turns to the one visible camera in the cell and just smiles.  
  
Zack types away, and the view on the screen changes until it’s just from that one camera.  
  
“Guardian,” End begins. “Marduk. Lieutenant. I accept your offer. I am under your orders from now until the completion of our mission.”  
  
His right hand moves to his head in a salute. He holds it for a long second, and then turns away.  
  
Zack, Veda and Mark look at each other for a long while, speechless.  
  
“OK, guys,” Veda says finally. “Can the next person we interview _not_ be completely fucked up? Please?”  
  
“That takes out, like, pretty much everyone,” Mark objects.  
  
“I’ll find someone,” Zack says. “She’s right, I need some… well. Normality. After _that_.”  
  
“I knew you’d see it my way,” Veda says, smiling at him.  


 


	4. the conversation: death machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I insult the hypocrisy and light your fire with your pain/I give into the ecstasy but the cold dark remains/I control my own destiny and I won’t suffer in vain/My enemy won’t be the end of me”- Motionless In White, “Death March”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm back. Sorry for the delay, I'm juggling a lot right now. The long list of ways to kill people was (mostly) derived from the Anarchist's Cookbook. It's amazing what you can find on the internet, honestly. Thank you for reading, and I hope you like it.

Then:  
  
It’s not that he especially likes violence.  
  
…well. Maybe it is.

( _that tense feeling in the air, the heightened excitement, the anticipation of the blood on the ground)_  
  
It’s not that he gets off on hurting people.  
  
…well. Not sexually. He can’t deny that he gets a thrill from blows well delivered and the effects thereof.

( _the crunch when his fist meets bone, the cries of pain he elicits, the way the world seems to fall silent as soon as he strikes)  
_  
It’s not that he wakes up and goes about his day, just waiting for the chance to hurt people.  
  
…well. He’d be lying if he said he doesn’t look forward to it.

( _watching everyone he passes, looking for the first sign of a potential attack, getting ready to launch the first blow as soon as he sees the opportunity)  
_  
It’s not that he can actually muster an excuse that actually holds water.

…  
  
In the end, it comes down to one simple thing: it’s how he copes. Which isn’t an excuse. It’s a reason, that’s all. But it helps him a lot.  


 

  
Contrary to a lot of people’s opinions, Sami Callihan is not, nor has he ever been stupid.  
  
He’s quiet. Rough. A big guy, intimidating, solid muscle. He doesn’t like to talk a lot, mostly because he’s been in too many situations where his words have been taken and used against him, twisted until they barely resembled whatever he’d actually said. But people take ‘big and quiet’ to mean stupid, and what happens as a result is their own fault.  
  
He’s never had many friends. As a kid, he was a loner when he wasn’t an outcast. An anthropologist, even, after years of having not much else to do at school but watch the other kids, notice the trends in their behaviour, see how the masses behaved. Even in high school, when he actually started getting friends, he kept up the people-watching.   
  
Some of it was force of habit. Some of it was… well. Paranoia? Curiosity? Maybe both. He always liked predicting what might happen based on what he saw. It was fun, even when he got it wrong. But it left him with some rather twisted views about people as a whole. After so much time apart from them, looking down on them, judging them, he’d started viewing it as ‘me and them’ without realising. Never a healthy attitude.  
  
He made friends eventually, but they weren’t… nice. To be more specific, they were brutal, violent, disrespectful, calculating, manipulative, petty, and prone to jibing and sniping at each other for no reason. ‘Friend’ was… something of a misnomer, there.  
  
But he didn’t mind so much. They’d accepted him as one of them, and after years of being a loner, years of telling himself that he didn’t need them, the relief he’d felt at being accepted…   
  
Yeah. He’d liked that. And ‘me’ had become ‘us’, also without him realising.  
  
He’d learned from them, too. They’d showed him things he would have never learned on his own: how to pick locks, how to get things past detectors, how to hotwire cars. Not skills he used a lot, but still. They were good skills to have.   
  
The lessons he’d focused on the most was about violence: how and when to use it, and how to make it matter.  
  
It was more than just the occasional friendly shove or light jab. It was watching a question of leadership being settled by several well-placed blows that left the recipient doubled over, retching, but not badly hurt. Humiliated, but not broken, and able to recover, to fight again.  
  
It was watching two of his friends beat up a guy who owed them money, and noting _how_ they beat him up: the blows were painful, but nothing too harsh. Nothing that would leave a scar, or make a deep bruise. Carefully calculated.  
  
It was getting in a fight with a guy he knew from school and getting the shit kicked out of him: as Sami lay limp in the dirt, groaning as kick after kick impacted, he was surprised at how easily he’d accepted it: they’d fought and he’d lost, and it was simply because he wasn’t good enough at fighting. That was it. He wasn’t even resentful.  
  
It wasn’t about right or wrong. It wasn’t about good or bad. It was about who was better at fighting, and that wasn’t him. Simple as that.  
  
The lesson stuck with him, enough that when his friends wanted to go after the guy for revenge, he stopped them: he didn’t want to win because of numbers. He wanted to win because of skill. And it took him a while to talk them around, but when they did, they helped him learn to be a better fighter.  
  
When he went back for the rematch, he won, and somehow, it was the sweetest victory of all.  
  
He wishes things could be that simple now.  
  
  
  
  
Now:  
  
“You have _no_ idea how hard it was to get access to this guy,” Veda informs Zack and Mark over lunch.  
  
“Why would they make it hard?” Mark asks. “I mean, didn’t they put him on the list in the first place?”  
  
Veda shakes her head. “No, I did that. The problem with these government assholes, Mark, is that they’ll never concede that anything they’ve done could be bad. And if by some miracle they do admit it, it’s never willingly- they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into it, even if it was a blatant injustice.”  
  
“Even when there were marches over this guy?” Mark asks, amazed. “And people around the world were calling for his release?”  
  
Veda grimaces and nods. “Yeah.”  
  
Zack coughs. “Can we go back to the beginning?”  
  
Veda sorts through her files and pulls out some papers. “Sure. OK, so, our guy is Sami Callihan, born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, pretty average background. Unremarkable childhood until high school- he started out as a loner, but in high school, he fell in with a bad crowd. Even as teenagers, they’d all had run-ins with the police, and some had been to court. As a group, they’re pretty unpleasant. During Callihan’s time with them in high school, they’re suspected of involvement in a lot of crimes: several assaults, a couple of stolen cars, and at least one case of arson. Keep in mind, that’s during the time Callihan was with them alone. After they graduate, they keep doing what they’re doing, and eventually join a fight club. They last a couple of months in the club until one of them winds up in a coma after a fight. He recovered, but most of his friends got out of the scene.”  
  
“The exception being Callihan?” Zack guesses.  
  
Veda nods. “So he gets a lot further into the fight club scene over the next couple of years, makes a name for himself, earns the nickname ‘Death Machine’- and most relevantly, _doesn’t_ kill anyone, which is the important bit. Sure, he’s put a couple of people in hospital, but he hasn’t killed anyone. And this is where everything goes to hell.”  
  
Zack makes a face like he’s chewing a lemon and nods.  
  
“I never heard the details,” Mark admits. “Just that he got locked up for no reason.”  
  
“Oh, boy, do we have a story for you, then,” Zack says with a sigh. “First thing you need to know is that this all took place about… six, seven years ago, right? Back before the DOP reforms. Everything had been going… well, not perfect, but pretty smooth, right? Then the Director of the DOP retires and this complete scumbag fills the position. And soon it becomes pretty clear that he’s one of those douchebags who always wanted superpowers, and since he didn’t get them, he’s getting revenge on everyone by being the guy in charge of all the people with superpowers.”  
  
“You’re joking,” Mark says.  
  
“God, I wish,” Veda says tiredly. “You have _no_ idea how petty some people can be when it comes to superpowers. And they’re always like ‘Oh, I don’t want to be Superman, just give me any power’ and yet somehow, they never want any of the _minor_ powers.”  
  
Mark shrugs ruefully. “I mean, it has appealed to me.”  
  
“It appeals to everyone,” Zack replies. “The media makes it look so fun. The reality… is shit, to be honest.”  
  
“But back to the story,” Veda says. “So the scumbag decides that he’s basically going to make everything go the way he thinks it should go, fuck how it’s already gone, and definitely fuck how other people think it should go. And he starts by suggesting that the new DOP policy should be that every paranormal who doesn’t work for the DOP is now automatically considered a villain.”  
  
Mark’s jaw drops. “You’re fucking kidding me.”  
  
Zack shakes his head grimly. “Which went down _really_ well, as you can imagine. All the heroes who didn’t work for the DOP were pissed off, along with all the neutrals, _and_ all the vigilantes. Then there were all the families of kids and young adults with superpowers, who were terrified that their kids would be given offers they couldn’t refuse- and that if they said no, they’d wind up in jail for the rest of their lives. And _then_ there was everyone who _did_ work for the DOP, who didn’t want to treat everyone like a villain for not working for them, and who also didn’t want to be involved in forcibly recruiting anyone or arresting anyone for saying no.”  
  
“Not to mention the international nightmare it caused,” Veda adds. “A lot of unfriendly countries had a field day with the idea that America was becoming a modern dystopia, and a lot of American villains used the suggestion to justify their crimes. A lot of _friendly_ countries condemned the action, and dozens of foreign heroes and neutrals asked if they could go to America without either being forcibly recruited or thrown into jail.”  
  
“Now, officially, nothing had changed,” Zack chimes in. “It was a suggestion, nothing concrete. But that doesn’t mean anything, because you know how the media is- they’ll take anything like it came straight from the President’s mouth. Anyway, the President and a lot of Congress basically said ‘You’re a fucking idiot, you’re not changing anything’, so that got nulled. But the scumbag was really pissed off at that, because he’s one of those morons who thinks that he’s always right, so anyone who opposes him must be wrong and evil and out to get him personally. So he sulks about it, and then he gets an idea.”  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” Mark mutters. “What did he do?”  
  
“He tries to rewrite the story,” Veda answers. “See, before, he was trying to change the story so that he’s the boss of all the heroes, the guy in charge, the absolute authority, but everyone shut that down. So since his first attempt’s been thwarted, he decides that he wants all the heroes to protect him, because obviously he’s now the crusader for justice who may have been thwarted, but he must have enemies out there who’ll want him dead for trying to change the policy.”  
  
Mark groans.  
  
“Well, to be fair, I knew a lot of people who wanted to kill him,” Zack concedes. “Just not many who would have actually done it. Pretty much everyone was just calling for his resignation.”  
  
“So mostly what he’s doing is making heroes serve as his unofficial bodyguard,” Veda says. “Because in the end, he’s just _so desperate_ to be a big name and a part of the superpowered community, and ordering heroes around is just one way for him to pretend.”  
  
“So what did he do?” Mark asks, cringing.  
  
“He gets one of the really, really powerful psychics to come up with a list of everyone who’s a real, concrete threat to him. Not the US Government, not the DOP… just him.”  
  
Mark frowns. “I’m not seeing how that went wrong?”  
  
“Well, as it turned out, the psychic he got to make the list for him was one of the really, really literal ones. So when he said ‘make a list of real threats to me’, he probably meant something like ‘tell me the names of everyone who might be gunning for me’, and what he got was everyone who was a solid threat who could actually get past his bodyguard of press-ganged heroes. And thankfully, the psychic who made the list realised her error and crossed off all the heroes.”  
  
“Why didn’t she just make a new list?” Mark asks.  
  
“Because when he found out, he actually liked the list, because it was unbiased, or some shit like that,” Zack says. “It didn’t just give him the names of villains, it gave him heroes, neutrals, even normals- anyone who could get to him, whether it was by power or planning.”  
  
“And this is where Death Machine comes in,” Mark guesses.   
  
“Got it in one,” Veda says glumly.  
  
  
  
Then:  
  
It would be so easy. So fucking easy.  
  
And that was why he couldn’t do it.  
  
_One punch to the stomach. He’s doubled over, grab his head, shove it down and knee him in the face. Nose is bleeding, he’s retching, step away in case he throws up._  
  
He’s got years of fighting experience. He _knows_ how to break people now. How to bring them down in less than a minute. He’s one of the best.  
  
_Stupid motherfucker’s still upright. Take him out, there’s no fun in him now. Pressure to the jugular, one hold. He’s in too much pain to fight back beyond the usual shitty attempt. Give it thirty and… there._  
  
He steps away from his unconscious opponent and sighs. All around the arena are people reacting: cheering, booing, applauding. Shouting compliments, praise, invectives, support, challenges.  
  
And none of it’s affecting him.  
  
He doesn’t even want the applause anymore. He knows he’s damn good. Now, he just wants the fight. 

He sighs, wearied.  
  
They’ve already chalked up the win on his record. It’s pretty damn impressive. He’s got a long list of people who want to fight him.  
  
He doesn’t want to wait.  
  
There’s a change in the wall of sound, and he looks up. His next opponent’s in the arena.   
  
He doesn’t recognise this guy. Young, fresh, muscled, fairly big. He doesn’t bother noting the name. According to the board, he’s got eight wins and two losses.  
  
Right. Enough to take a little seriously, not enough to take _really_ seriously.  
  
Sami shakes his head from side to side a little, blinks hard. He needs to stay alert. Even if this kid’s as easy as Sami thinks he’ll be, all it has to take is one loss. One fight where he fucks up. One fall, one punch in the wrong place, one broken bone, one concussion, and he could be out permanently.  
  
But not today.  
  
The kid starts moving, hands up in the traditional position, but Sami doesn’t move. He just stands there, eyes locked on the kid’s face, waiting.  
  
And waiting.

And waiting.  
  
The kid’s reluctant to approach, nervously dodging from side to side, visibly hesitating. Sami can tell that he’s not used to an opponent who won’t play like the others do.  
  
The kid takes a step forward, foot coming down…  
  
…and Sami staggers like he’s been punched, reeling, _something_ flooding through him.  
  
Before, he was thinking of the best way to take the kid down.  
  
But now…   
  
_He knows._  
  
He needs to angle his hand so it’ll impact, breaking the nose into little pieces that get driven upwards, into the brain.   
  
He needs to land his fist right between the eyes, the best place to topple the kid so he falls backwards and hits his head just right, so he’ll be out of it and likely won’t ever recover.  
  
He needs to throw in some misdirection, so he can get behind the kid and break his neck.  
  
He needs to stagger him with a blow to the stomach or diaphragm and then go for the jugular again, choke him out.  
  
He needs to get the kid down so he can tear his jugular open with his teeth and watch him bleed out.  
  
He needs to gouge the eyes, letting blood loss and shock take care of the kid for him.  
  
He needs to cup the kid’s ears, bursting the eardrums and letting internal bleeding do the work.  
  
He needs to hit the bridge of the kid’s nose with the knife edge of his hand and shatter it.  
  
He needs to get in a direct blow to the Adam’s apple, collapsing the kid’s windpipe.  
  
He needs to get the kid against the arena wall and punch him hard enough to shatter the kid’s skull against the wall.  
  
He needs to land a palm strike to the philtrum, where the nerves connect.  
  
He needs to hit the temple hard enough to get the kid down.  
  
He needs to hit the tailbone hard enough to damage the brainstem.  
  
He needs to land enough punches to the rib cage to break them and move them around, hopefully piercing various organs in the process. 

He needs to force his fist as far as he can down the kid’s throat until he suffocates.  
  
He needs to-  
  
_What the fucking fuck is_ wrong _with me?_  
  
The thought smashes through the suggestions, knocking Sami out of it.

He blinks. Less than a second has passed. The kid’s foot lands on the ground, and Sami’s staggered a little, breathing hard.  
  
_What the_ fuck _just happened?_  
  
He looks around wildly, desperately, and freezes.  
  
Every single person provokes an avalanche of new thoughts in his brain. Idea after idea, method after method of killing them, incapacitating them, maiming them…  
  
The kid’s in front of him now. Smart enough to take advantage of a distracted enemy, stupid enough to believe that Sami could be taken unawares.  
  
_If you walked into this fight not knowing who I am, what I do, it’s your own damn fault.  
_  
Everything slows to a crawl as the kid swings a fist toward Sami’s face. Second after second passes so slowly it’s like moving through honey, and Sami instinctively _moves._  
  
It’s like one of those perfect kills in _Skyrim_. His hand flicks out, jabs the kid’s arm aside, and then his other fist moves up in a smooth arc, landing right between the kid’s eyes.  
  
He holds back, refusing to make the blow lethal, and the kid drops, landing hard, body shaking with the impact- and then just lying there, still.  
  
Jesus Christ.  
  
Jesus _Christ._  
  
Sami steps back, deaf to the cheering, staring down at his hands, unsure of what to think.  
  
_What_ happened _to me?_  
  
  
  
Now:  
  
“Basically, from what I understand, Death Machine’s power tells him the best way to kill or hurt someone and lets him put it into practice,” Veda explains. “So as you can imagine, he’s a _massive_ threat to pretty much everyone.”  
  
Mark frowns. “I’m having trouble believing that.”  
  
“Why?” Zack asks.  
  
“Like, OK, his power tells him how to kill people, sure. But we’re talking about experienced heroes, with their own powers, and you’re saying he can magically get past them? Even the ones with armour and shields and backup?”  
  
“We don’t know, because nobody ever got the chance to find out,” Veda says. “But apparently, before he got moved, they got him to see if he could theoretically break through a hero’s armour- without the hero in it- and his power identified several weak points, including a couple the hero didn’t know about.”  
  
“Shit,” Mark says slowly. “But even so, if he hasn’t tried it on anyone fighting back, how can we be sure that his power’ll work?”  
  
“You’re thinking about it the wrong way,” Zack replies. “It’s not about whether he personally can kill someone fighting back. It’s about whether he can tell _us_ how to do it. And if we wind up fighting aliens or something, creatures with completely unknown biology…”  
  
“…he can tell us how to kill them. _Shit,_ ” Mark intones, awed. “Yeah, we need this guy.”  
  
“I agree,” Veda says.  
  
“So what happened? How’d he get locked up?”  
  
“Well, the scumbag went through the list, discussed it with his bodyguards, and went after anyone who wasn’t a hero, a heroic neutral, or at least vaguely aligned with the good side. _Most_ of them had actually committed crimes, so they got put on trial and locked up. Yeah, it was fucked up, but at least they got a trial,” Zack explains.  
  
“But then there was Death Machine,” Veda says grimly. “Because nobody had ever heard of him when his name turned up on the list, they weren’t sure what to think, and when the brains did a little magic and found out what his power was, they _freaked_.”  
  
“ _Stupid_ ,” Zack says, almost furious. “Fucking _stupid_. Possibly the most goddamn moronic thing they could have done. They had the research, they _knew_ he wasn’t dangerous. They could have tried to recruit him, _talk_ to him, or, you know, they could have done the sensible thing and just left him alone! He wasn’t hurting anyone… well, you know what I mean. But the fucker overreacts, has his people grab Death Machine and throw him in prison. Death Machine does two months in general while the fucker tries to come up with a justification for throwing someone in jail without a trial, and when it finally hits him that he’s taken someone with no reason to care about him and given him a really _good_ reason, he gets Death Machine transferred to C Wing.”  
  
Mark looks at Veda. “C Wing?”  
  
“The actual maximum security wing of the Citadel,” she explains. “Most people in the Citadel get the general setup, but the people in C Wing get their own personalised cells and constant, 24/7 supervision via the cameras. They’re allowed to interact with each other, but they’re kept far away from the general population, and there’s all kinds of measures to keep them there. It’s kept reserved for anyone who could and would escape from the usual measures, or who is considered to be too dangerous to leave in the usual places. Thousand Faces and Marionette are in there, too.”  
  
“And when it gets pointed out to that _fucker_ that he’s a complete _cunt_ , he goes for the old ‘don’t know who you’re talking about’ routine. And that’s the end of the story. Even after he got sacked and the DOP got reformed, they’re still refusing to admit that anyone named Death Machine has even existed, let alone that they’ve locked him up in the Citadel,” Zack snaps. “They haven’t given him access to a lawyer, guards have got sacked for admitting that he exists… he’s been in there for years!”  
  
“Hang on, hang on,” Mark says. “Even after the DOP got reformed, they’re still doing it?”  
  
“The problem with the government is that getting them to admit that they fucked up is nearly impossible,” Veda replies. “Anything that involves an open loss of face, at least. The world is watching everything we do, especially the DOP. And it’d take someone really, really brave to admit that an arm of the US Government had one of its citizens thrown into maximum security prison and essentially disappeared for existing with the wrong power. The entire paranormal community would freak out, people would be asking why this fuckwit was able to do so… it’s nothing that isn’t happening now, but it’d be on a much, much larger scale.”  
  
“So where does that leave us?” Mark asks.  
  
“The short version is that I _think_ I can leverage this to get Death Machine a better sentence. He’s been quietly sentenced to twenty years, and he’s been missing for about seven so far. I think this is the government’s way of trying to fix the problem- they can’t openly admit anything, but they _could_ just let his sentence run out and then let him go. If he agrees, I’ll do everything I can to either get his sentence nullified for going on the mission, or to get as much of it taken off as possible.”  
  
Zack glances at her. “You’re really involved in this, huh?”  
  
“Well, you know me, Zack. I’m a lawyer and a fighter. I fix injustices, that’s what I do.”  
  
“Just as long as you don’t kill anyone this time,” Zack mutters.

Veda’s glare could melt steel.

“And what about the mission?” Mark asks hastily.  
  
“We’ve got an appointment to see him tomorrow afternoon,” Veda replies. “Don’t be late, or they’ll cancel it. Rule in C Wing is that if you make an appointment to see someone, you’d better show up right on time, exactly how you said you would. No adding or subtracting anyone.”  
  
“I’ll be there, I’ll be there,” Mark mutters under his breath.  
  
True to his word, Mark is right on time, though he has to run accomplish the ‘on time’ part.  
  
The guards at the doorway don’t look impressed, but they let the trio through after a thorough search. Once they’ve collected themselves, the trio are led down a long, narrow, _bleak_ corridor by a stonefaced guard.  
  
“Jesus, they’re thorough,” Zack comments, sorting through his bag. “I’m surprised they didn’t just rip the damn bag to shreds.”  
  
“They have to be,” Veda replies. “It’s the rules. They’re obligated to treat everyone in C Wing as if they’re constantly planning to escape, so they can’t let anyone bring anything in that a prisoner could use to escape, or as a weapon. They search anyone who goes in on the way out, too, in case whoever they’ve visited stole something or slipped them something.”  
  
“Anyone actually try to escape?” Mark asks.  
  
“A few times,” Veda replies. “None of them actually made it, but it made the DOP _really_ paranoid. I mean, Thousand Faces could probably do it if she really wanted to, and if Marionette somehow escaped, we’d all be fucked.”  
  
“We caught her once, we can do it again,” Mark says flatly.  
  
“You only caught her the first time because she was so focused on killing the last two, she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings,” Veda rebuts. “If she decides to break out, it’ll be a whole other situation.”  
  
“She can try,” Mark growls. “We’ll put her the fuck down.”  
  
“We’re not having this conversation again, Mark,” Zack snaps.  
  
The guard stops next to one of the identical doors that very occasionally appear in the corridor: solid metal, with no windows or even visible locks, let alone doorhandles. A small nameplate next to it reads ‘Death Machine’.  
  
“How do you get the door open?” Mark asks, momentarily diverted.  
  
The guard knocks twice, the heavy _thud_ echoing through the corridor. Then he looks up at the camera behind him and made a series of hand signals.  
  
“Controlled remotely, huh?” Mark asks.  
  
Veda nods. “Yeah, it’s so nobody can try picking the lock. Hypothetically, someone strong enough could break the doors down, but even if they got out of their cell, they probably wouldn’t even make it to the end of the corridor, let alone outside.”  
  
The door slides open soundlessly, revealing a large, empty space in front of a wall of thick white glass, the outline of a door faintly visible in one patch.  
  
“Uh. What?” Mark asks.  
  
“Rules say that if more than one person visits, only one can go inside the cell,” Veda replies. “Everyone else stays out here with the guard. Except that this is a private visit, so the guard stays outside.”  
  
“So who goes in?” Mark asks.  
  
There’s a long pause, and then Veda shrugs. “I’m the one behind this whole thing, and I want to get him out. It should probably be me.”  
  
“What if he attacks you?” Zack points out. “I mean, you’re not a fighter.”  
  
“It’ll be fine, Zack. Trust me.”  
  
Mark and Zack exchange a glance, and then nod.  
  
Veda steps up to the door, the guard nods, and the cell door slides shut behind them. A second later, the glass wall flickers, turning from opaque white to completely clear in seconds.  
  
The cell is unremarkable, resembling a rather well set out hotel room: a large bed, a table, chairs, a bookshelf, a punching bag and treadmill in one corner. There’s more, but the salient point is its occupant.  
  
The first thing Zack thinks when he sees Death Machine is that the guy is definitely going to be trouble. The second thing he thinks is to wonder whether it’s worth taking him along.  
  
Sami Callihan is about six feet of solid muscle, scars dotting his skin. His hair is black, short and spiky, looking like it’s been hacked short with a knife. He looks like he’s an inch away from trying to punch his way through the wall, and as Veda steps through the door and into the cell, his eyes lock onto her face.  
  
“Who the fuck are you?” he snarls.  
  
“I’m Marduk,” Veda says evenly. “They’re Guardian and Lieutenant Andrews.”  
  
“You cops?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You lawyers?”  
  
“She is,” Zack says casually.  
  
“What the fuck do you want?”  
  
“We’ve got an offer for you,” Zack replies.  
  
Callihan remains still for a second, looking from Veda to Zack and back again, and then he starts pacing, constantly twitching and fidgeting. Finally, he stops in front of the wall.  
  
“You know how long I’ve been in here?”  
  
There’s a pause as the trio exchange glances, and then Callihan slams his hand against the wall.  
  
“Hey! Do. You. Know. How. Long. I’ve. Been. Here?”  
  
“Seven years,” Veda replies quietly.  
  
He whirls around, still angry, and then pauses.  
  
_“Seven?”_  
  
Veda nods.  
  
He closes his eyes, slumping with despair. “What’s the date?”

“August 2016,” Zack replies.  
  
“Shit,” he whispers. “ _Shit.”_ His head falls into his hands.  
  
“They didn’t tell you?” Mark asks.  
  
Callihan shakes his head slowly. “Nothing.”  
  
Mark looks at Veda. “OK, that _has_ to be illegal.”  
  
“In case you haven’t noticed, all of this is illegal,” Veda pointed out.   
  
Callihan’s head snaps up. “You tryin’ to play me?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Comin’ in here, talkin’ like you’re on my side, actin’ like you actually give a shit? Fuck you!”  
  
Before anyone can stop him, he’s got one hand around Veda’s throat, pinning her against the wall in one easy movement.  
  
Mark reaches for a gun he doesn’t have, and metal flickers into existence in Zack’s hand, forming a rough blade.  
  
“Guys!” Veda rasps, making frantic gestures with her right hand. “Stop. He’s not going to hurt me, and you can’t touch him.”  
  
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Zack responds, hand gripping his ‘sword’.  
  
Callihan looks down at Veda’s hand. “The fuck are you doing?”  
  
“Signalling the guards, telling them to _not_ knock you out,” she responds steadily, staring into his eyes.  
  
“You don’t know that I’m not going to hurt you,” he snarls.  
  
“Yeah, I do,” she replies. “I’m reading your mind right now.”  
  
“Fuck!” He steps back abruptly, shaking his hand like he’s been shocked.  
  
“It’s not contact based,” Veda informs him, breathing a little easier. “And you’ve got it wrong. We’re not here to play you. Like he said, we’re here to make you an offer.”  
  
She glances over at Mark and Zack. “Stand down, guys.”  
  
Mark and Zack exchange a long look, and finally nod, returning to their earlier positions, the ‘sword’ slowly dissolving into thin air.  
  
Callihan’s backed up against the opposite wall, staring at Veda like she’s a ghost. “What the fuck do you want with me?”  
  
“Simple,” she replies. “ _They_ want you on their team. _I_ want to get you out of here.”  
  
He freezes.  
  
“I’m not lying,” she says quietly. “And I’m not talking a breakout. I’m talking legally. And for the record, yeah, I work for the DOP, but I didn’t have anything to do with how you wound up in here. I’m a former supervillain.”  
  
He blinks. “ _You?_ ”   
  
“Me.”  
  
He looks from one face to the next, looking hunted, spooked. After a second, he finally speaks. “What… what is it you want?”  
  
“Like I said, I’ve got an offer for you,” Zack says.   
  
“Hit me.”  
  
“I’m not going to lie. If you say yes, you could end up dead. Hell, we could all end up dead. But, if you make it out, you get your sentence cut in half.”  
  
“That applies to everyone else who says yes,” Veda cuts in. “For you, I’m going to do my damn best to get your sentence reduced as much as I can. What happened to you is a fucking crime, and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue.”  
  
“The offer’s simple,” Mark says. “There’s a populated location that’s gone dark. We don’t know if anyone’s alive, what’s in there, why there’s no communication. Could be nothing, could be anything. You say yes, we go in there, find out as much as we can and get out.”  
  
“And if we make it out, my sentence gets reduced? I don’t even have a sentence.”  
  
“Officially, you’ve been sentenced to twenty years,” Veda says. “Which would mean that you’d have ten years left, but you’ve already ‘served’ seven, so I’ll try cutting it down as much as I can.”  
  
Callihan looks back at Zack. “Why ask me? I’m not a soldier.”  
  
“Like I said, we don’t know what’s in there. It could be a riot, some kind of breakout gone wrong, maybe we find nothing at all, or worst comes to worst, it could be an alien invasion or some kind of supervillain attack. There’s a possibility that we might end up fighting something completely unknown, and if we do, you can tell us how to kill it.”  
  
Light dawns in his eyes. “You want intel.”  
  
“We _need_ intel,” Mark corrects him. “If the enemy’s a complete unknown, the likelihood that someone gets killed goes up. We might be recruiting supervillains, but we’re not going for cannon fodder, and we _don’t_ want anyone to get killed.”  
  
“And if it’s nothing? We walk in and everyone’s just gone, no fighting? We still get the reward?”  
  
“Damn right you do,” Veda replies firmly.  
  
Callihan looks down at his hands for a second, blinking hard, and then looks back at Veda. “I’ll do it.”  
  
“Good,” Zack says. “Welcome to the team.”  
  
Callihan glances over at him. “What happens now?”  
  
“We’ve still got people to ask,” Veda replies. “A fair few. It’ll take a couple of days to get ready.”  
  
He nods slowly. “Right.”  
  
She steps forward and puts a hand on his arm. “I promise, we’re not doing this to fuck with you. We’re not going to leave you here.” 

Instead of looking reassured, he looks even more spooked.

“Ask Seeker if I’m legit,” she says. “He’ll tell you. In detail.”

His eyes widen. “You know Seeker?”

“Understatement of the century,” Zack mutters.

“Tell you what,” Mark offers before anyone else can say anything. “I’ll come by in a couple of days and give you updates, OK?”

Callihan nods, and somehow it’s patently obvious that he’s glad it isn’t Veda doing the offering.

Zack checks his phone and frowns. “Looks like our time’s nearly up.”

Veda nods. “Right. OK, looks like we have to go now, but yeah, we’ll get you those updates.”

Callihan nods along, but his expression is almost tragic- like someone who’s just realised that they’re dreaming, and will have to wake up.

“I’ll be back in a couple of days,” Mark says firmly. “Three, at the most. That’s a guarantee.”

Despite the uplifting note, as the trio emerge from the cell, there’s a feeling in the air that infects them instantly, a subtle change in mood. As though they’re abandoning Callihan to die.  
  
And as the cell door slides shut behind them, the _thud_ sounds like the fall of an axe.

 


	5. the conversation: rosemary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want your touches to scar me so I’ll know where you’ve been/I want you to watch when I go down in flames/I want a list of atrocities done in your name/I want to reach my hand into the dark and feel what reaches back”- Recoil, “Want”

Then:  
  
She’s never thought that she’d ever want to die faster.  
  
The air is full of the creaks and groans of shifting materials: bricks and wood and tiles, constantly shifting and adjusting to their new circumstances.  
  
Her vision has turned cloudy white, faint shades of grey the only sign that some of her sight yet remains. Stupid, to look right at the bomb when it went off.  
  
She’s lying in a tiny space, wreckage surrounding her. There’s a long, jagged piece of wood stuck through her chest, another piece has gone right through her left palm, and most of her right leg is gone.  
  
_Help me. Oh God, someone help me._  
  
She knows she’s somewhere near the bottom of the heap. She’s escaped being crushed- God knows how- but somehow, she’d prefer a quick death to slowly bleeding out, alone, blind and helpless.  
  
She can’t move. All she can hear is the sound of the wreckage shifting, and all it would take is one wrong movement.  
  
Then again, maybe that’s exactly what she should do. Just finally end it.  
  
She tastes blood in her mouth, the rich, coppery tang swamping out the stench of fear, and her body shakes as she coughs, unable to hold it back. More blood fills her mouth, and she freezes.  
  
Above her, the wreckage shifts again, and something falls, landing with a _thud_.  
  
She’s trembling. Shivering. Her hands feel like ice, and the cold is spreading.  
  
_Please, somebody…_  
  
Something wet runs down her cheeks, and it takes her a second to realise that she’s crying.   
  
**Let me in.**  
  
The voice makes her shudder, rippling from her head down to her toes, and she can barely just manage to shake her head once.  
  
**I can help you. Let me in and I will heal you. You can escape this.**  
  
She tries to whisper “No”, but she chokes on the blood in her mouth.  
  
**You will die soon. Let me in and you will _live._**  
  
Far above her, a bird calls- an oddly innocent sound. She tries to move her right hand, but her fingers won’t respond.  
  
**Listen to me. I know you’re scared, but you _will_ die if you do not accept my offer.**  
  
She shakes her head again, crying.  
  
**What is it you fear? You do not want to die. I have the only alternative.**  
  
She tries to say ‘Soul’, and more blood leaks from her mouth, staining her dirt-covered skin.  
  
**You are not selling me your soul. I will not take it. You, and only you, can possess your soul.**  
  
She doesn’t move.  
  
**Do you think you can escape with your power? You know that will not work.**  
  
It’s ironic, really. She has the power to absorb life energy from anything, and here she is, dying, surrounded by materials- and her power can’t do shit without killing her.  
  
**You know this is futile. What will-**  
  
Footsteps.  
  
Someone’s close by. Stepping carefully around the wreckage.  
  
The dim light of hope awakens in her heart.  
  
_Help me…_  
  
A voice. Female. Saccharine. _Happy._  
  
_Her._  
  
“Oh, Courtney? If you’re still there, I just wanted a word.”  
  
_You. You_ bitch.  
  
“I mean, you’re probably dead by now, since, you know, I dropped a house on you like the _witch_ you are, and you were stupid enough to just stand there and let me do it…”  
  
_Go… fuck… yourself._  
  
“But in case you’re not, I just wanted to say… go to hell. You bitch.”  
  
_I’ll… see you there._

  
“So, yeah! I guess that’s all. Have fun being dead.”  
  
Footsteps again, getting softer, eventually vanishing.  
  
She slumps down against the wreckage, ruined eyes closing, still crying.  
  
The voice whispers again, dark and seductive, filling her mind.  
  
**Let me in and I will help you. We can get revenge. Make her _pay._**  
  
Her hand trembles. 

She’s starting to lose all feeling.  
  
**Bring her down and make her _suffer_. Pay her back for everything she did. Just say yes. Let me help you.**  
  
With the last bit of strength left in her body, she nods.  
  
**Good. It is done.**  
  
Her eyes shoot open, turning to pitch black, the colour covering pupil, iris and sclera. Her body begins to shake uncontrollably, the wreckage shifting as she moves, and more blood shoots from her mouth as she hacks and coughs.

Pain shoots through her body, accompanied by visions so grotesque that she’d scream if she wasn’t choking.

  
In her last moments, Courtney Rush sees Hell.  


 

 

  
Now:  
  
“Rabid, Architect and Powerhouse said no,” Veda informs Zack and Mark as they meet in the cafeteria. “Not that I really thought they’d say yes, but anyway…”  
  
Mark shrugs. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”  
  
“Can’t say I’m sad,” Zack adds. “Who are we talking to today?”  
  
“To start with? Rosemary,” Veda answers. “And oh, this is a fun one.”  
  
“How fun are we talking?”  
  
“She’s the other one who’s definitely under supernatural influence,” Veda replies.  
  
“Oh. Yay.”  
  
“What kind are we talking, exactly?” Mark queries.  
  
“That is a damn good question, but we’ll get to that in a second.” Veda sits down and pours herself a cup of coffee. “OK, so our story starts a few years ago, with two neutrals called Courtney Rush and Cherry Bomb. Cherry’s a technopath whose specialty is, as you might expect, bombs.”  
  
Zack shudders. “Christ.”  
  
“If it helps, she’s always been pretty good about selling them,” Veda says. “According to the records, she only sold lethal ones to the US and Canadian militaries. She sold things like flashbangs and smoke grenades to basically anyone, hero or villain. Hence the whole ‘neutral’ part. No team or organisation, apparently she just really likes making bombs.”  
  
“And Rush?”  
  
“Was one of those neutrals who don’t want to get involved with the whole hero/villain part. Didn’t use her powers, didn’t register, didn’t even get a codename.”  
  
“Well, when your power’s absorbing people’s life energy, it’s not hard to see why she didn’t want to get involved,” Zack admits.  
  
“Anyway, Rush and Cherry got into some fights. Not sure what about, but they end up really hating each other, and getting into repeated conflicts over several years. Nobody gets seriously hurt, which is kind of a feat given that we’re talking about a bomb maker, but their feud gets a fair bit of attention. Things keep going along those lines until Rush and Cherry have some kind of massive fight where again, nobody gets hurt, but everyone now wants to kill everyone else.”  
  
“Oh, I don’t like where this is going,” Zack mutters.  
  
“It gets worse,” Veda says glumly. “Cherry decided to go violate rule 6.”  
  
“She _didn’t_.”  
  
“Rule what?” Mark asks.  
  
“Oh, right. There’s this… code, I guess. An officially unofficial list of rules for supervillains.”  
  
Mark looks sceptical. “Supervillains have rules?”  
  
“Not all of them,” Veda admits. “Basically, the idea of the code is that most supervillains aren’t in the business to make random chaos. They’re in it for a reason- maybe they want to run a city, maybe they want to deal drugs, maybe they want to steal stuff- but either way, things will go better for everyone if they can all just go about their business without everything going up in flames. Especially the civilians. And even if you’ve got two villains who want to do the same thing in the same place, they should at least handle it without screwing everyone else over.”  
  
Mark nods. “So the code is like, no random destruction?”  
  
Veda waves a hand. “Kinda-sorta. Some of it’s really simple- you know, don’t go after families, don’t kill people or destroy property without a really good reason, don’t get into someone else’s business uninvited, etc, etc. And a lot of it comes down to being civilised, with an emphasis on talking things out instead of starting fights or something that’ll get the cops on everyone’s heads.”  
  
“So where did you fit in?” Mark asks curiously.  
  
“Oh, we didn’t,” Veda admits. “We weren’t doing anything remotely related to business.”  
  
“So what’s rule 6?”  
  
“Rule 6 says that if you call a ceasefire, a truce, a meeting on neutral ground, that everyone involved- involved meaning ‘willingly chose to participate or turn up’ must therefore abide by the terms. Or, in other words, no taking advantage of a truce or meeting to take people out when they least expect it,” Zack explains.  
  
Mark looks disgusted. “So Cherry backstabbed Rush?”  
  
Veda nods, her eyes stony. “Set up a meeting at an abandoned house, supposedly to talk about burying the hatchet. Rush got there, then a minute later, the house gets dropped on her. Once they went through the wreckage, they found her blood and parts of her everywhere. It’s a miracle that there was any left to find.”  
  
“Jesus,” Mark mutters. “What happened afterwards?”  
  
“Well, there was no physical evidence that Cherry had done it, but everyone in the paranormal community knew who it was. Leaving aside the bomb part, there was basically nobody else who had a reason to kill Rush, let alone anyone pissed off enough to blow up a house with her inside.”  
  
“So I take it there’s penalties for breaking the code?”  
  
“Damn right there are,” Veda snaps. “If someone breaks the code, it puts everyone’s ability to do business in jeopardy, because if one person breaks it, the chance that someone else will goes right up, and then everything goes to hell. So a lot of people _thoroughly_ explained to Cherry that she’d made a really, really big mistake. Especially since a lot of them liked Rush.”

“And I take it you were among those people,” Zack says.

Veda nods grimly. “Look, Courtney Rush was a friend of mine, OK? So yeah, I’m biased. And yeah, we made her pay.”

Mark and Zack exchange a glance, and then Mark tentatively asks, “So where does Rosemary come in?”  
  
Veda flicks through her notes. “Well. Skip ahead to around a year and a half later, when Cherry starts reporting that she’s being stalked. Someone keeps following her, leaving red roses and threatening messages for her.”  
  
“What kind of messages?” Zack asks.  
  
“I don’t recall the particulars, but they were along the lines of ‘I’m coming for you’ and ‘watch your back’. The usual.”  
  
“Oh. Those.”  
  
“Then Cherry and a bunch of other people get invited to a meeting on neutral ground…”  
  
  
  
Then:  
  
As nice places went, The Den wasn’t one. It was a hole in a long street of holes, a shitty bar that nobody liked. The décor was stained, dingy and in ill repair, the drinks were cheap and nasty, and the staff were fully aware of how bad their place of employment was, and subsequently didn’t really care about the standard of service.  
  
The main room was half-full of various people drinking the cheap drinks and watching a basketball game. The back room was half-full of various supervillains, who were mostly abstaining from the drinks and cautiously watching each other. It was hard to say who had got the better deal.  
  
“Time?” the man at the head of the table asks.  
  
The first of the two subordinates standing behind him checks his watch. “9 PM exactly, sir.”  
  
The man nods, glancing down the length of the table, noting the empty chairs. “And who do we have here?”  
  
The woman two seats down from him gives him a long, cool stare. “Well, there’s me, you, Cherry Bomb, Princess, Poison, Blitz, Glitz, Weapon, Knockout, Spanky…”  
  
Phenomenal gives her an identical stare. “Thank you, Eerie. So, who are we missing?”  
  
“I’d say our hosts,” Poison replies, flicking her long red hair back. “I’m assuming you know when they’ll arrive.”  
  
Phenomenal blinks. “Me? No.”  
  
Poison frowns, confused. “But you sent me the invitation…”  
  
“Wait, what? I didn’t send anything.”  
  
Blitz turns to Poison. “You sent _us_ the invitation.”  
  
There’s a long, long moment where everyone is looking at everyone else, but before anyone can react, Knockout raises his hands. “Everybody, just wait!”  
  
He’s got the presence to make it happen, and it worked: everyone freezes, some with hands halfway to their weapons.  
  
“OK. Let’s stay calm. No reason to shoot. Can I take it as read that everyone here got the invitation from someone here?”  
  
Nods.  
  
“Did anyone bring theirs with them?”  
  
A few produce pieces of paper, set out on the table to be examined.  
  
“Everyone who didn’t bring theirs, can you take a look and see how similar they are?”  
  
A minute later, they reach a consensus.  
  
“OK. So we can all agree that we got the same letter, apart from the alleged recipient? Good.”  
  
Knockout looks around the room and folds his arms. “If whoever sent these wanted to get us to fight each other, it obviously hasn’t worked. So why don’t you come out and talk, like you said you wanted to?”  
  
There was another long pause, and then someone laughs- a deep, drawn-out cackle that has everyone in the room sighing or rolling their eyes.  
  
“Seriously, Steve? _Seriously?_ This isn’t funny,” Eerie mutters.  
  
“Oh, I think it is,” Steve replies from a distance. 

Everyone goes very still.  
  
“Steve can _talk?_ ” Poison exclaims.  
  
“I can now,” Steve replies, glee filling his tone. “And I’ve gathered you all here tonight to show you… what’s been _happening._ ”  
  
The door creaks open, moving slowly until a massive hand slams into it, sending it flying into the wall.  
  
The first figure to walk into the room resembles a clown gone horribly wrong. He’s wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and black pants with a red tie, and his face is covered in smeared white paint, a red cross from forehead to chin and across his cheekbones.  
  
And he’s grinning, a maniacal grin that doesn’t leave his face as his eyes dart from person to person.  
  
The second is a giant of a man, a monster clad in a black leather jacket over a black tank top and black pants. His face is also covered in white and red paint, but it’s smeared, patchy, his stringy black hair stuck to it in places.  
  
“Abyss,” Phenomenal says, his voice quiet. “Where’s your mask?”  
  
Abyss grins at him, showing the gaps where he’s lost teeth. “Don’t need it anymore. I’m _beautiful._ ”  
  
Nobody quite knows what to say to that.  
  
“Since when are you two palling around?” Eerie asks after an awkward pause.   
  
“Oh, it’s been a few months now,” Steve replies, constantly shifting, moving like a snake. “But we haven’t been up to much. We’ve been… adjusting. Learning. Discovering ourselves.”  
  
“So why call the meeting?” Glitz demands.  
  
“Two reasons,” Abyss replies. “First is that we wanted to announce that we’re going to be raising hell from now on. I mean, it’s the polite thing to do, right? Tell everyone beforehand?”  
  
“And the second reason?” Knockout asks.  
  
Abyss steps aside, leaving the door clear. “Got somebody we want to introduce to you.”  
  
The… _thing_ that shambles through the door barely looks human. It… she…? is wearing a simple black and red dress that looks almost clean. Her short black hair hangs loosely around her face, obscuring it from view, and she walks slowly, lifting each foot and setting it down like it takes all her strength. Her arms and legs are dotted with what looks like smudges of dirt, and her hands are held behind her back, her head cast downward.

  
“What… who the fuck is this?” Phenomenal demands.  
  
“Our new friend,” Abyss replies. “Meet Rosemary.”  
  
At the sound of her name, Rosemary lifts her head slowly and hesitantly, her face coming into view. Like Steve and Abyss, her face is covered in white paint, but unlike her teammates, her makeup is more elaborate: both eyes are surrounded with black makeup, a long black line has been traced from her forehead, through her right eye and down her cheek, her lips are surrounded by carefully drawn teeth, and her chin has been coated with more black makeup.   
  
She opens her eyes, and everyone sees that they’re completely black, the faintest dots of red light in the center. Her hands emerge from behind her black, gripping a red rose.  
  
And she’s staring directly at Cherry Bomb, who’s frozen to the spot, looking like she’s seen the devil.  
  
“What?” Poison asks, looking from Rosemary to Cherry. “What is it?”  
  
“She’s dead,” Cherry stammers, nearly knocking her chair over to get further away from Rosemary. “She’s fucking dead!”  
  
“Funny, she doesn’t look dead,” Steve comments.  
  
“No, you… you’re dead, you’re fucking dead!” Cherry nearly screams. “I killed you, you’re _dead!_ ”  
  
“Dead?” Poison repeats. “What are you talking about?”  
  
On the other side of the table, Eerie and Weapon look equally horrified.  
  
Phenomenal sighs and slams his fist down on the table. “Can someone please explain what the fuck is going on?”  
  
“That’s Courtney Rush,” Eerie answers in a horrified whisper.  
  
“Rush? Isn’t she… oh. Oh _fuck.”_  
  
Rosemary turns to Phenomenal and smiles.   
  
“You’re dead, I killed you myself!” Cherry screams. “You’re a fake!”  
  
Rosemary takes a long, dragging step forward and holds out the rose. “We came back for you… our sweetest enemy… we came back to see you again…”  
  
Her voice is as cold as the grave.  


 

  
  
Now:  
  
“So… let me get this straight. Courtney Rush gets blown up and is declared dead…”  
  
“Right,” Veda says.  
  
“And then half a year later, someone who physically looks a hell of a lot like her turns up, but she looks different, acts different, speaks differently and is going by a different name.”  
  
“Right,” Veda agrees.  
  
“So why the hell should I believe that Rosemary is Courtney Rush and not someone who just looks like her and is pretending to be her for some reason?” Zack concludes.  
  
“It’s a fair point,” Mark admits.  
  
“God, I wish it was true,” Veda says with a sigh. “Two reasons: first is that Rosemary has been observed using Rush’s life absorption power. There’s probably lots of other people out there with the same or similar powers, but what are the odds that there’s someone out there with the same power who looks that much like Rush?”  
  
“OK, that’s fair,” Zack replies. “And the second reason?”  
  
“When Rosemary, Steve and Abyss were arrested, a few of the officers asked the exact same questions and ran DNA tests. Rosemary is Courtney Rush- and she’s very much alive.”  
  
“Then how the hell did she survive getting blown up?” Mark asks.  
  
Veda looks glum. “That’s where the supernatural part comes in. Even with her life absorption power, the chance that Rush somehow managed to survive the explosion by herself is pretty much nil. Unless someone managed to teleport her out- which is very unlikely, because that person would have had to have known that she was going to get blown up otherwise- Rush somehow survived getting blown up. But she comes out of it, as Zack said, looking and acting differently, going by a new name, and using new powers. So what are the odds that there isn’t something supernatural going on here?”  
  
“Do we know what, exactly?” Zack asks.  
  
“Rosemary claims to be a demon. I’m not qualified to say whether demons actually exist or not, so… I guess it’s possible? Either way… I don’t know. A lot of people think she’s a zombie, though I think that’s just a bad case of too many horror movies.”  
  
“You haven’t tried to read her mind?” Mark asks. “You could tell if she’s lying, right?” 

“Theoretically,” Veda replies. “But honestly, I’m not sure if I want to know. Even if that is actually Courtney, she’s someone completely different now.” 

“Well, either way, we need her,” Zack says. “So it’d be good to know.  
  
“You’re right,” Veda replies. “I know, it’s just… I’m really not looking forward to this.”  
  
“Out of curiosity, what happened after she came back?” Mark asks.  
  
“Cherry Bomb managed to escape the meeting and began attempting to kill Rosemary again through an unsuccessful campaign of bomb attacks. Rosemary, Crazzy Steve and Abyss went after Cherry Bomb’s friends, allies, connections, basically anyone who was linked to her. It didn’t last long- given all the damage and the high rate of critical injuries, several villains, heroes and the RS joined forces to get all four of them locked up. Cherry Bomb is being kept far, far away from them,” Veda adds at the end.

“And Rosemary, Steve and Abyss apparently spend half their time doing their best to scare the hell out of everyone within a few metres of the cell and the other half trying to be a three-person version of Morticia and Gomez Addams,” Zack concludes.  
  
"Well, there's a mental image I never wanted to see," Mark says.

 

 

  
  
For a possible zombie, Rosemary is surprisingly polite: she doesn’t object to being asked to leave her boyfriends behind for the interview, for one.   
  
She shambles calmly into the bare cell chosen as the interview room and sits down at the table, presenting her wrists to be cuffed without objection. Only then does she look up at the trio in front of her, smiling in a way that makes her look as though her face is a mask.  
  
“Rosemary,” Zack says as casually as if he talks to supernatural creatures every day. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us.”  
  
Rosemary tilts her head a little, still smiling.  
  
“I’m Guardian, this is Lieutenant Andrews, and-”  
  
“Hello, Veda,” Rosemary says, interrupting him.  
  
Veda stays silent, staring at Rosemary with stony eyes.  
  
“Don’t you remember us?” she asks.  
  
Zack and Mark glance at each other.  
  
“I remember Courtney,” Veda says finally. “I don’t know who Rosemary is.”  
  
“Courtney’s still here,” Rosemary replies, smiling. “Can’t you tell?”  
  
There’s a long moment where nobody says anything. Suddenly, Veda’s eyes grow wide with alarm as she gasps. She chokes, looking like she might cry or throw up, and then bolts out of the cell.  
  
“What the hell?” Mark asks, looking from Zack to Rosemary. “What just happened?”

“We showed her what she wanted to see,” Rosemary replies. “We showed her the truth. And now she knows, and her soul is filled with grief.”  
  
Zack purses his lips and changes the subject before Mark can ask further. “We invited you here because we have an offer for you.”  
  
Rosemary looks attentive as the pair outline the mission, but the same frozen, glassy smile stays on her face the whole time.  
  
“Any questions?” Zack concludes.  
  
“Why only ask us, and not the rest of us?” she asks sweetly.  
  
Zack and Mark exchange a nonplussed glance.  
  
“She means, why aren’t we asking Steve and Abyss,” Veda says from the door.  
  
“Oh! We thought your skills would work better for the mission,” Mark answers, looking at Veda questioningly and getting a shake of her head for his answer.  
  
“That being said, the reward would stand for all three of you,” Zack adds hastily.  
  
Rosemary tilts her head, curious. “You want us on your team so badly?”  
  
“More that we figure it’d be unfair to only give it to you, and leave your friends behind,” Zack answers.  
  
Rosemary tilts her head in the other direction, looking thoughtful.  
  
“So what do you say?” Mark asks.  
  
“We accept,” Rosemary replies, pausing a little. “On one condition.”  
  
“Which is?” Zack asks.  
  
Rosemary looks directly at Veda. “Why didn’t you come visit us?”  
  
Veda takes a step toward the table. “You really want to do this here?”  
  
“We think we have a right to know,” Rosemary replies. “Why?”  
  
“Because I didn’t think it was you,” Veda admits. “I didn’t know _what_ to think. You died and then you came back and it was hard enough coping with the fact that Cherry killed you without the bit where you came back as a completely different person, all right?”  
  
“You doubt us so?” Rosemary asks, frowning.  
  
“You got blown the fuck up!” Veda snaps. “How many people survive that?”  
  
Rosemary stares at her for a couple of seconds and then lowers her head.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Veda says. “It’s not like I wanted to abandon you. I just… it fucking hurt. A lot.”  
  
Rosemary meets her eyes, and asks in a small, quiet tone, “Can we still be friends?”  
  
Veda takes her glasses off, rubs her eyes, puts them back on, walks around the table and enfolds Rosemary in as big a hug as she can manage, given the awkward positioning.  
  
“I’ll be your friend as long as you’ll be mine,” she says.  
  
Rosemary breaks into another smile, and Mark thinks that it’s the first smile he’s seen her make that actually looks genuine.  
  
“We’ll be your friend,” she says. “Always.”  
  
“Then it’s a deal,” Veda replies, and hugs her again.  
  
Mark clears his throat. “Uh, look, sorry, I hate to be the buzzkill, but we still kind of need that answer.”  
  
Veda glares at him, but Rosemary thinks for a few seconds and then nods. “We’ll do it.”  
  
Veda grips her shoulder tightly. “Just don’t get killed, understand? Don’t you dare. Not again.”  
  
Rosemary smiles sunnily up at her. “It takes a lot to kill us, remember?”  



End file.
